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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture The persistence of 'progressivist' historical mythology is indeed remarkable. One wouldn't think that Butterfield (who, by the way, wasn't a Catholic) had published /The Whig Interpretation of History/ as long ago as 1930 - and ended it with a reflection on the Hyde Park orator's assertion that 'When the Pope ruled England, them was called the Dark Ages'. MAUREEN A TILLEY wrote: > medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture > > In reply to > I try to emphasize that the > : Middle Ages was not some sort of aberrant "pious" > : anomaly in European history, but that real people, > : like themselves, lived there. [Bugslag] > and > This raises an interesting (to me at least) question, as to why > the same issue does not seem to arise for earlier periods: > Greco-Roman antiquity, for example, was a world in which ideas, > structures, and practices that we call "religious" were no less > pervasive, for much the same reasons . . . . [Lockyer] > > I think that the problem with the Middle Ages is a historically > pervasive bias by many historians against Roman Catholicism which, for > better or worse, identifed with and was identified with the Middle > Ages. Evidence? The European Romantic movement of the nineteenth > century with its many Catholic authors, Jonathan Z. Smith's excellent > study /Drudgery Divine/, and, for a more pop-culture approach, /Il > Medioevo secondo Walt Disney/ by Matteo Sanfilippo (Thank you, Gary > Macy, for the Sanfilippo reference). Witness also the careful, but > alas biased, work of Lea on the Inquisition and the history of > auricular confession (mis)used by many polemicists. When the pervasive > culture says the medieval peiod was rife with superstition, no wonder > students balk at investigating the religious life of medieval people > more than people of an age about which they think they know less. > > Maureen A. Tilley > Visiting Professor of Theology > Fordham University > 113 W. 60th Street > New York, NY 10023 > 212-636-6369 > ********************************************************************** > To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME > to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it > to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the > message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order > to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: > [log in to unmask] For further information, > visit our web site: > http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html