On Thu, 25 Apr 1996, JH Arnold wrote:
> (1) in the context of Inquisition penances and punishments, inquisitors
> were aware that they were *hoping* to act out of "love" in punishing
> people to reclaim their souls; but that they might have to forgoe that
> aim, if the heretics were obstinate or even just not very good at
> repentance,
i believe obstinancy is in the very definition of a heretic.
> and instead punish them to illustrate to the rest of the
> population what bad people they were [and therefore map out the boundaries
> of transgression].
this is what the Romans were doing with Jesus. do you think people back
then were blind to the analogy (alright, for them it was the Jews, but
all the more reason to analogize their inquisitor/priests with the Saducees).
> The second option involved violence; it was not done
> from "love" for the victim. It was perhaps done from "love" for the
> general population, as part of their instruction and the cura animarum.
> IN EITHER CASE it allowed the (literate and elite) inquisitors to direct,
> promulgate and enforce their own ideological understanding of their
> actions and the reasons for their actions. AT THE SAME TIME (sorry for
> shouting, wish i could do italics in PINE) the populace "reading" these
> penances/punishments cpould interpret them themselves in a variety of
> different ways - some falling in with the inquisitorial ideology,
> others having different ideas. I don't have time to quote egs. here but i
> am talking from analysis of evidence, not conjecture.
eg the Waldensians, who, despite starting out wishing to be the defendors
of the faith, end up attributing the ills of the church to the moment
when Constantine converted the Church to imperialism. in terms of the
current discussion, one could probably divide those who viewed violence and
love as compatible and those who did not precisely along the lines of
those who viewed Constantine as a good or bad thing for Christianity. in
terms of the "conspiracy of silence", i think it is clear which group has
access to the media which will survive to our day.
> (2) all of which leads me to think that the relationship between "love"
> and "violence" is complicated because both of these are culturally,
> ideologically and historically contingent concepts. Do we "love" as
> anyone loved in the 14th century? ... that's a big question, but what
> concerns me more about the on-going discussion is that people seem to be
> getting entangled in moral judgement, trying to convict or defend
> medieval people or groups in their approaches to violence and love. I
> wouldn't want to censure the strong feelings one's work can arouse; but
> i think that ahistorical moral judgements confuse matters rather than
> enlighten ...
well put. i do not deny finding something deeply disturbing about the
marriage of violence and love in medieval thought, and hold Augustine
responsible (my wife, Paula Fredriksen, says i don't like him because he's
the other man in her life). but i think i can finesse that (will be
interested in your thoughts) by arguing that i am dealing with the value
judgments of the people back then. the problem with value-free
historiography is that it tends to eschew not only the historian's values,
but the values of those we study. and yet... their value judgments loom
large in what motivated their behavior. so although i may be motivated
to look for evidence by a belief that such an attitude contradicts some of
the most profound and consequential elements of Christianity, i still
look, and i think i find evidence of a voice which is constantly present,
but does not, for a variety of reasons, register well in the kinds of
official media we historians must, by necessity, favor.
btw, i have now gotten a copy and read Riley-Smith's article in *History*
reference to which started this particular exchange. he is quite clear
that this combination of violence and love is what he calls
"one-dimensional" (189) and "debased" (191) in its understanding of
Christian love,
that it comes out of a canonical/papal milieu which "presented their
one-sided version of love deliberately, with a view to the [crusading]
audience they
were addressing" (190); and that it was "theologically essential to the
crusading movement, because for Christians in all ages sacred violence
cannot be proposed on any grounds save that of love" (191). now this
sounds to me like an acknowledgment that we are dealing with a
(particularly successful) cloak for the nakedness of violence and
vengeance (both particularly prominent sentiments among crusaders, but
not openly acceptable sentiments to a Christian), what a psychologist
would call a "rationalization". this does not mean it was
inconsequential, nor that great minds did not set about trying to make it
work ("for all its obvious faults, one is bound to admire the subtlety and
learning of the canonists' treatment of force..." [189]). but i hardly
think it means that all committed Christians (including high
ecclesiastics) accepted the argument.
rlandes
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