medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Those of us who make the distinction, as I did, entirely coincidentally, this very morning in my class, between the spiritual and temporal powers in the process of Inquisition, do so not to say that the Church was uninvolved--which would be absurd, but rather to be very clear about who was involved and how. We do this in response to disingenuous Enlightenment and anti-clerical blanket claims about the Church's involvement that refuses to distinguish between the roles.
Medieval society was multilayered and complex, as all societies are. Here is not the place to try to thrash out all aspects of the Church's ownership of property (donated by lay people of means for a wide variety of motivations but including the purpose of permitting monastic life or episcopal government to flourish alongside all sorts of other socio-political purposes) and the obligations that came with being a landowner. Carrying out civil and criminal jurisdiction was part of that. In most instances the actual execution was done by lay people to whom it had been delegated (the secular advocate, Vogt, mercenary soldiers etc.). Of course it's hard to imagine a prelate being a secular lord without getting involved in military matters (but military matters can mean a lot of different things). The fact is, however, that temporal and spiritual were interrelated.
It is possible for us to conceive of a strict separation between spiritual and temporal power, perhaps. That might seem neat--to have the Church solely concerned with spiritual matters and only temporal rulers concerned with jurisdiction and war. But I can't imagine a medieval person imagining this. That we can imagine it tells us more about our culture than theirs. We have privatized religion, taken it out of the public sphere. That may be an improvement, though it does not seem to have led to a reduction in bloodshed or dehumanization or tyrranny, if the 20thc is to be taken seriously. The point is that medieval folk, given their believes about an all-powerful God who created everything, could scarcely have thought that "temporal" government had nothing to do with belief about God and right and wrong or that "spiritual government" had nothing to do with civil legislation and enforcement.
The process by which bishops became involved in what we could call civil jurisdiction came partly by choice but also by default when Christian people initially voluntarily turned to bishops to resolve disputes among them (as St. Paul mandated in the NT) but later found themselves with little choice in the matter since alternative sources of civil jurisdiction had atrophied at least in specific regions for specific periods of time.
This does not justify the abuses that have been cited, instances in which apparently bloodthirsty clerics led in battles. But one would have to try to identify to what degree they were indeed bloodthirsty and violent (i.e., try to get at the facts as best one can from the sources that may or may not be exact descriptions) and then try to distinguish abuse from routine, de facto from de jure.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 11/22/02 02:23PM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
(Very interesting to me is the level of technicality in the whole
prohibition on bloodshed by clergy -- for instance, the suggestion that
as long as you don't literally shed blood violence is okay (thinking
especially of Inquisitorial torture here, and the idea that only the
"secular arm" burned heretics and thus the Church was uninvolved). Or
the fact that clerics were frequently in the position of having to hire
or direct troops even when they didn't directly participate in the
subsequent bloodshed. It's especially hard to imagine how a bishop could
operate as a secular liege -- which they frequently did -- without
eventually getting involved in warfare and the execution of criminals,
so those guys were kind of laboring under a contradiction in terms...)
These are vague recollections from reading done a long time ago, so if
I'm leading anybody astray, my apologies in advance.
--Sarah Roark
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"It comes in pints?"
-----Original Message-----
From: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Torben Nielsen
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 12:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] Violent and/or figthing bishops?
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
Dear learned colleagues
One of my students is currently working on a project involving an
examination into the crusades and the possible (paradoxical) incidences
of
violent bishops or other prelates. If any of you know of any such
incidents
in any sources, where bishops actually are reported to have shed human
blood, I should be happy to hear of this.
Best wishes
Torben K. Nielsen, Aalborg University
Torben K. Nielsen, Ph.D
Associate Professor, Head of Studies
Department of History
Aalborg University - Denmark
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