medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Gurevich is, in my judgment, too hasty here. I suggest
John Van Engen's now classic essay, “The Christian Middle Ages as an
Historiographical Problem.” American Historical Reivew 91 (1986):
519-532. It's a sensitive and sensible navigation through the
question of how we has historians deal with evidence that suggests
varying degrees of adherence to Christianity, and has been recommended by
others on this list before.
Patrick Nugent.
At 02:12 AM 10/17/2001 +1000, you wrote:
medieval-religion: Scholarly
discussions of medieval religion and culture
As I recall, Gurevich's posits a theory that the original/natural
religion of the medieval peasantry was a kind of dualism based on fear of
the devil against which the official church waged a constant struggle. He
therefore reads church resistance to dualist heresy as evidence of
popular culture (hence his title) emerging from the constraints of
institutional church power. I may be misreading him here (must reread the
book), but this struck me as not very convincing at the time - and also
based on the conceit that the "people" were not fully converted
to Christianity. Shades of Margaret Murray.
Hilary Carey
Patrick J. Nugent
Institute for Quaker Studies
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA
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(765) 983-1413
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