medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Timothy Ladd wrote:
"One of the main reasons that Freud will not be very
useful in the Middle Ages is that there was no crisis
of identity as we know it. Socioeconomic factors there
again being the major cause of this psychological
divide."
This is an interesting assumption. Many would argue
that the proliferation of popular religious groups
between the end of the tenth century and the beginning
of the thirteenth was itself much to do with a crisis
of identity. The political and socio-economic factors
which sociologists are inclined to identify as
quintessentially modern (e.g. commercialisation,
urbanisation, individualism, centralisation,
technological change, etc. etc.) appear to have been
as much a part of the high Middle Ages as of our own
modernity. The sociological models which are used to
describe our own epoch are often applicable to the
past. Our medieval ancestors differ fundamentally
from us in the worldviews, conceptual frameworks,
religious and secular narratives within which they
expressed and resolved (in part) their own crises of
identity. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the
Middle Ages somehow had a 'coherent' and 'integrated
belief-system'. Constable, among others, has written
at great length about the religious conflicts between
rival religious orders in the twelfth century, not to
mention various heretical sects in the period.
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