medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 08:39 AM 10/16/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Richard Landes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >in this context, allow me to reiterate my question: what evidence is
>there for any real enthusiasm for christianity among the commoner lay classes
>before the 11th century?
>
>I think it probably depends on how strict you are about your definition of
>Christianity. Is it necessarily what the hierarchy at any given moment
>said that it was? From the time of Caesarius of Arles, the clergy were
>constantly complaining about unseemly goings-on during the vigils of
>saints's feasts and within the precincts of the church. St. Boniface's
>account of his troubles with the two "eccentrics" Aldebert and Clement
>(c. 743) suggests that people of all classes were sufficiently
>christianised to be responsive to heresies. One of Charlemagne's early
>decrees deals with bands of vagrants who wandered around naked, loaded
>down with chains, saying that this was a penance of some sort. They were
>obviously peasants, because the edict advises them to settle down and work
>the land. The use of holy chrism as medicine and, apparently, as a means
>to foil the ordeal is found in several capitularies. Around Vercelli in
>the 10th century, peasants were baptising branches and pieces of turf in
>order to establish a relation of godparenthood. At the very beginning of
>the 11 th c., Burchard of Worms describes the burial of dead infants who
>had been baptized with wax replicas of consecrated bread and wine; infants
>who had died without baptism were impaled with a stake driven into the
>ground, to prevent them from doing harm.
It seems to me that such practices imply that at least some
peasants, or peasants in some areas, had internalised Chrisitianity as they
understood it, and showed their devotion to the saints and the sacramentals
of the Church in their own fashion - however much the ecclesiastical and
civil authorities may have disapproved.
Bernadette Filotas
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