medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Scott Matthews <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>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."
>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.
perhaps Timothy should have said "that there was, *relatively,* no crisis of
identity as we know it."
or, maybe that's what his "as we know it" was meant to imply.
>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.
!!
o, for goodness' sake.
>The sociological models which are used to describe our own epoch are often
applicable to the past.
within certain well and deliberately defined limits, and with great caution,
perhaps.
>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.
agreed.
>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.
again, i'm sure even the Great Man would agree that it's a question of
*relative* "coherence" and "integration of belief-system."
to compare the [admittedly very real] "religious conflicts" between, say, the
Cluniacs & Cistercians with the intensely divisive, not infrequently violent,
and thoroughly "disintegrated" ones of the Modern Era (from the early 16th c.
to the Present Moment) is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of both
"conflicts."
*nothing* compares, historically, with the present "incoherent" and
"disintegrated belief-system" of the world we live in.
best from here, nonetheless,
christopher
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