John - your Erasmus quotation was a real treat to me - Thanks a lot!
It has a very substantial background, of great interest to art historians,
because it involves a very well documented case, where a finished work of
art had to be removed for political reasons.
The dispute between the Hermits of St. Augustine and the Canons Regular
broke out with great fury in the late 1470'ies. Not about the supposed
relics as suggested by Sharon Dale (this came first in, when the dispute
was revived after 1600, by some new provocative publications from the
Hermits), but on a much more fundamental question. Which of the two orders
were the direct descendents of Augustine himself?
When four marble statues of the fathers of the church were made in Milan,
was Augustinus, on purpose, dressed like a Hermit (with a cowl [cucullus]
and a string [cingulum] around the waist, as was their habit at the time),
and this provoked a world wide uproar amongst the Canons in 1479, when
several books were edited for and against.
The dispute went on, until Pope Sixtus IV stopped any futher discussions by
a severe bull (dating from May 1484)*. The general of the Hermits, Ambrogio
da Cori, was emprisoned and died later in Castel S. Angelo in 1485.
*See Acta Sanctorum, August, Tom.VI, Antwerp 1743 p. 248ff.
Best wishes
Erik Drigsdahl
At 21:56 -0400 21/05/2000, John Wickstrom wrote:
>I am reminded by this message and the thread in general of Erasmus's passage
>referring to the monks and friars in the Praise of Folly:
> "But what could be more charming than to observe how they do everything by
>rules, as if they were entering figures in a ledger where it would be a
>terrible sin to overlook the smallest detail: how many knots to the shoe,
>what colors and different styles for each garment, of what material and how
>many straws wide the cincture may be, the cut of the hood and how many pecks
>it should hold, ho w many inches long the hair may be....Nevertheless,
>because of such trifles, not only do they consider outsiders beneath their
>contempt but one order scorns another, and men who profess apostolic charity
>raise a catastrophic uproar about a garment that is belted somewhat
>differently, or a color that is a little darker."
_____________________________________________________________________
Mag.art. Erik Drigsdahl CHD Center for Haandskriftstudier i Danmark
Kapelvej 25B 3.tv Phone: +45 +35 37 20 47
DK-2200 Copenhagen N Email: <[log in to unmask]>
DENMARK http://www.mobilixnet.dk/~mob75182/
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