medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The persistence of 'progressivist' historical mythology is indeed
remarkable. One wouldn't think that Butterfield (who, by the way,
wasn't a Catholic) had published /The Whig Interpretation of History/
as long ago as 1930 - and ended it with a reflection on the Hyde Park
orator's assertion that 'When the Pope ruled England, them was called
the Dark Ages'.
MAUREEN A TILLEY wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> In reply to
> I try to emphasize that the
> : Middle Ages was not some sort of aberrant "pious"
> : anomaly in European history, but that real people,
> : like themselves, lived there. [Bugslag]
> and
> This raises an interesting (to me at least) question, as to why
> the same issue does not seem to arise for earlier periods:
> Greco-Roman antiquity, for example, was a world in which ideas,
> structures, and practices that we call "religious" were no less
> pervasive, for much the same reasons . . . . [Lockyer]
>
> I think that the problem with the Middle Ages is a historically
> pervasive bias by many historians against Roman Catholicism which, for
> better or worse, identifed with and was identified with the Middle
> Ages. Evidence? The European Romantic movement of the nineteenth
> century with its many Catholic authors, Jonathan Z. Smith's excellent
> study /Drudgery Divine/, and, for a more pop-culture approach, /Il
> Medioevo secondo Walt Disney/ by Matteo Sanfilippo (Thank you, Gary
> Macy, for the Sanfilippo reference). Witness also the careful, but
> alas biased, work of Lea on the Inquisition and the history of
> auricular confession (mis)used by many polemicists. When the pervasive
> culture says the medieval peiod was rife with superstition, no wonder
> students balk at investigating the religious life of medieval people
> more than people of an age about which they think they know less.
>
> Maureen A. Tilley
> Visiting Professor of Theology
> Fordham University
> 113 W. 60th Street
> New York, NY 10023
> 212-636-6369
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