medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I have been wondering if in the discussion of priesthood and violence we
have not been missing the point.
Surely the matter is less about taking life (ultimately it is God who takes
life or restores it - not necessarily, but especially in battle, some people
survive hideous injuries, some people die from no or small apparent cause)
than about the defilement of death and blood ?
Classical & Mediaeval man believed there were 2 sorts of blood, the bright
which was controlled by the heart and the dark which was controlled by the
liver. (It was not until the Civil War [Battle of Naseby ?] that the Royal
doctor William Harvey propounded the notion that all blood was one and that
something in the body caused it to change colour as it circulated.) In the
Border Ballads there are 3 kinds of blood: the Thin (capillary ?) the Thick
(venous ?) and the Heart's Blood (arterial ?) and it was only the loss of
the last "the dear heart's blood" that was fatal. Possibly there would have
been different degrees of pollution attached to the different sorts of
blood.
I don't think this is special to the Judeo-Christian tradition but applies
to Far Eastern religious practice as well.
If you kill someone whom it is lawful to kill, a criminal or a foeman, and
you do it personally with a bladed instrument, your hands and your clothes
will get stained with blood which is perceived as both a mess and as a
spiritual defilement - i.e. ritual pollution.
(The inferiority of women was based on their unclean association with blood
both in the menses and in the post-partum "loss".)
If however you cause someone's death with a blunt weapon - a single-stick or
a club, there may or may not be localised bleeding but the killer is not
usually defiled with the blood.
I seem to remember that Friar Tuck always used a single-stick never a sword
or the bow-and-arrow.
In this context, the old Jewish method of capital punishment was stoning
which was both "democratic" and shared out and diluted the guilt, but also
ensured that no one was defiled with blood. There is also something in I
think Leviticus about Levites keeping away from the defilement of the dead,
even of their own close kin.
Is it not also true that unarmed methods of self-defence such a judo were
developed by Buddhist ? Shinto ?? priests so that they could protect
themselves without shedding blood and incurring ritual defilement.
In both the trial and the rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, great emphasis was
laid upon the fact that although she wore a sword when riding into battle
she never so much as drew it, far less killed anyone with it since she
needed her left hand to control her horse and her right hand to carry the
banner. (Of course she was not a trained knight but that is not the moral
point.)
It seems to me that it was considered - by some thinkers at any rate - that
it was OK for clerics to kill at a distance provided their victim was a
properly identified enemy and provided they did not literally "get blood on
their hands" and clothes.
Does this refocus our thinking ?
I am sorry if this is a bit vague.
Brenda M. C.
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