medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I've read the book (actually while it was still in ms form) and I would say o, it's not carrying revisionism too far. The book is not "revisionist", or at least not revisionist just to be revisionist. It is a brilliant (really) reexamination of the history of indulgences; it is painstaking and balanced. What's most noteworthy is that the author wishes to avoid reading the evidence backwards from the Reformation; the result is that the history of indulgences dovetails in with the history of penance (sacramental and otherwise), popular piety, ecclesiastical reform movements, the development of the episcopacy and its relation to the papacy... in short, indulgences take their proper place among the various ways that the Church (lay and clerical) tried to make salvation possible. The genuinely and *persistently* pastoral nature of indulgences — astonishingly, even up to the eve of the reformation, at least in the eyes of some clergy and evidently a whole lot of lay people — is shown by evidence that counterbalances the well-knowm evidence about the unarguable abuses and "sales" of indulgences in the later MAges. I love the $ for Peter's Dome story and use it in my classes to connect Ren and Ref. But that's the point: it is all connected, and treating indulgences as some sort of cynical aberration really isn't a good historical approach. Shaffern puts it back in context where it belongs.
I say it's recommended reading for all medievalists.
And - it's very nicely written, as a bonus!
TGD
>>> John Briggs <[log in to unmask]> 1/22/2007 5:48 AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
John McChesney-Young quoted an incautious blurb:
> In The Penitents' Treasury, historian Robert W. Shaffern debunks this
> argument through a reexamination of indulgences that shows how their
> alleged evils have been exaggerated throughout history. This provocative
> volume, a necessary read for anyone interested in medieval history and the
> history of religion, calls for much rethinking about the state of the
> church on the eve of the Reformation.
Isn't this carrying revisionism a bit too far? Although Luther attacked
indulgences - and the doctrine of Purgatory that underpinned them - it was
universally acknowledged (and had been for a long time) that the real
scandal was the sale of indulgences, and the grotesque commissions paid to
the sellers.
I wish I could find again the reference (I think it was Rudolf Wittkower or
Edgar Wind - not, I think, Ernst Gombrich) where I read how renaissance art
caused the Reformation: the plenary indulgence for the re-building of St
Peter's allowed such a commission to the sellers that most German bishops
wouldn't allow them into their dioceses, but the local prelate (the
Archbishop of Mainz?) had over-extended himself buying renaissance art and
needed his cut. So the indulgence sellers were allowed into Wittenberg...
Of course, Protestantism owed everything to the printing press in more ways
than are obvious: the first thing that Caxton seems to have printed in
England was an indulgence! The mass-production (so to speak) of indulgences
would inevitably bring down the entire edifice.
Radix malorum est cupiditas...
(I sometimes wonder what the future will think of the charity industry of
our own day.)
John Briggs
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