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At 03:45 PM 12/27/00 -0500, you wrote: > >>>http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/banned.htm > > >ITEM #15 > > From Cardinal Merry de Val, "Forward," in the Index of Prohibited >Books, revised and published by order of His Holiness Pope Pius XI (new >ed.; [Vatican City]: Vatican Polyglot Press, 1930), pp. ix-xi: >[p. ix] What many, indeed fail to appreciate, and what, moreover >non-Catholics consider a grave abuse — as they put it yes, welcome to the modern world where multiple voices get heard. as this posting so disturbingly illustrates, there are some catholics who do not like to be accused of grave abuses, but do not hesitate to accuse others of precisely the same thing... and, when they had power, to use coercion to impose such a "reading". >of the Roman Curia, is the action of the Church in hindering the printing >and circulation of Holy Writ in the vernacular. >Fundamentally however, this ac- [p. x] cusation is based on calumny. okay, so the roman curia considers it not a good thing to be accused of hindering layfolk from having access to the bible. >During the first twelve centuries Christians were >highly familiar with the text of Holy Scripture, you've got to be kidding. if by xns he means layfolk, there is no way anyone can say this with a straight face about europe from ca. 500-1200. >as is evident from the >homilies of the Fathers and the sermons of the >mediaeval preachers; not at all evident. leaving aside the fathers (who, in the west, at least, were dealing with a vernacular bible, appropriately known as the "vulgate"), i wd argue that the sermons of the medieval preachers neither assume knowledge of scriptures and certainly no specific, textual knowledge of them. >nor did the ecclesiastical authorities ever intervene >to prevent this. It was only in consequence of >heretical abuses, heresy, for the historian, is a political category (see Talal Assad's article, "Medieval Heresy: An Anthropological View," Social History, 11 (1986), 345-62). one generation's heretics are another's church renewers (from waldo, who thought himself fully committed to catholic orthodoxy and wanted to fight the cathars, to francis). to invoke heresy as if it were an objective category comes back to the problem of "objective exegesis." obviously, altho perhaps not to cardinal de val, most of these heretics believed that they were reading the texts honestly and spiritually, and that the malice came from the church. to assume the heretics malice and then use it as a justification for burning vernacular bibles, strikes me as a very bizarre defense against the alleged calumny. >introduced particularly by the Waldenses, the Albigenses, >the followers of Wyclif, and by Protestants >broadly speaking (who with sacrilegious mutilations of Scripture good grief. i've heard of lack of exegetical modesty, but this is just not acceptable discourse among historians. you can't do good history if you treat those who disagree with the catholic church as engaged in sacrilegious mutilations of scripture. >and arbitrary interpretations vainly sought to justify >themselves in the eyes of the people; twisting the text of the Bible to >support erroneous doctrines condemned by the >whole history of the Church) ouch. here is where i think we see modernity and the magisterium collide, if i might digress onto a relevant but modern issue of epistemology. the point that all these "heretics" were trying to make was that this "twisting of texts to support erroneous doctrines" describes precisely what the catholic church was doing. as a historian it's not my job to take sides (even if as a person of faith i have my own opinions), but it is my place to point out that when the church cdn't win the fight with persuasion (ie commonfolk were convinced that these wandering preachers without institutional support who ran the risk of persecution were more correct in their reading of scripture than the priests), she turned to coercion, a sure sign of spiritual trouble. (for a good treatment of the shift from persuasion to coercion, see the Edward Peters book on Heresy in the MA. to invoke the "whole history of the church" in support of a reading that used force to impose itself is not exactly what i wd call a compelling argument. >that the Pontiffs and the Councils were >obliged on more than one occasion to control and >sometimes even forbid the use of the Bible in the vernacular... in order to protect their interpretation. how can this be a refutation of the argument that the catholic church tried to control access to the bible? just because they may have felt (and may apparently still feel) justified in controlling what people read and think for the sake of the church's determination of what's good for their souls, this hardly obviates the claim that they tried to prevent people from reading the text. so if everyone had read the bible their way, catholics wd have been happy to have people read it, but since layfolk didn't, they tried to stop them from reading it... is this the defense against the calumny that the church tried to keep layfolk from reading the bible? the fact that the present church (at least as represented by Cardinal de Val), even finds this claim -- which they accept with explanation -- as a "calumny" suggests all kinds of interesting forms of cognitive dissonance as a result of modern, liberal society. >This quote from his Eminence Cardinal Merry de Val, shows that Michale >Shelfer's web site, quoted above, is not being straightforward in this >presentation of texts. He avoids the obvious context of all the >disciplinary quotes he makes: namely that the vernacular translations being >condemn or prohibited were erroneous translations my goodness gracious. and the latin vulgate makes no mistakes? think how embarrassing such a claim is in the context of those knowledgeable in both hebrew and greek. >motivated by those who >intended to protray the meaning of scripture other than that which its >historical authors intended. this sounds like "strict reconstructionism". you realize of course, that one cd conceivably make the case, based on this kind of argument, that xnty, in all its shapes and forms, was a malicious little jewish heresy that had the nerve to challenge the historical weight of biblical interpretation by the rabbis for over a millennium; that these xn heretics insisted on twisting the meaning of scripture (young maid becomes virgin!), on inserting texts even into their own NT (on the trinity); and that, if only the 1st cn jews had been as "disciplinary" as the 13th catholics, there wdn't have been a xnty (e.g., they wd have started by burning all septuagints). as far as i can make out, the only justification for this apologia is the claim to have a "lock" on true interpretation -- dare i say, "objective exegetical truth". what wd such people do, had they the power to enforce it? i return to my question, brother alexis, what do you make of the franciscan participation in the inquisition. which, i believe, returns us to the subject of the list -- medieval history. >But then again that is M. Shelfer's intent on his web site: ergo.. > >A scholar should consider the context of his sources, primary and secondary. indeed. richard brother alexis, if there's anything in this discussion you wish to pursue with me that is not relevant to the list, i'd be happy to do so. i was visiting your franciscan website and noticed that there was no mention of joachim of fiore. did i miss it? r