medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Jon Cannon <[log in to unmask]>
> Yes, the Cistercian cathedral is strange indeed.
or would be, if it ever existed.
certainly not in France.
>I believe I came upon it in Diarmaid MacCulloch's History of Christianity.
But don't have the book to hand. And even that may be a case of False Memory
Syndrome.
yes, that latter is always a problem.
albeit, a temporary one --another 50 years or so, and you will have forgotten
all about it.
>I too assume the Benedictines in Scandinavian may be based on English
examples....Perhaps the influence went the other way...
Scandinavia to England?
probably not before the 12th c.
> As for France, a cathedral priory was created at Condom in the mid-C16, so
the idea was around,
well, there was a *lot* of stuff going "around" in C16, so Condoms were
useful.
>albeit at a late date.
yes.
a bit.
> These C11/12 reformers you mention: do we know what they wanted to create?
Cathedrals staffed by Regular canons?
a good question --and one not asked nearly often enough.
especially by older (French) historians, who tended to be quite scandalized by
the state of Holy Mother Church, en ces temps la --to the point that they
occasionally *repressed* original sources which reflected badly upon Her.
my *feeling* is that guys like Ivo had relatively "modest" (albeit impossible)
goals: clergy (esp. secular clergy) who would just *do* what they were
supposed to do (or what their jobs were, by Ivo's lights).
mainly, perform Divine Office more or less on time and try their best to not
Rip the Church off.
the latter, of course, was all mixed up with familial matters --everything
from favoring your own kinsmen (lay kinsmen with property rights, benefices,
"advocacies," etc.,; clerical kinsmen with ecclesiastical offices and other
perks) to the extreme of passing ecclesiastical property on to your own
children.
clerical "marriage" was (i read somewhere) so widespread in the 11th and early
12th c. that it is estimated that 20% of English clergy were leading
non-celibate lives --with such enormous consequences for the health & wealth
of the Church that a Vast theological edifice had to be constructed in order
to "prove" that the natural state of the clergy had to be celibacy.
the Victorine reformers --as best i can understand-- were interested in
"regularizing" the secular clergy: getting them to live (under a Rule) a
celibate, communal life, elect their abbots and other officers in a more or
less canonical fashion, not rip off the church --nor let their kinsmen rip off
the church-- you know, stuff like that.
what they were Up Against --in the collegiate churches all over France as well
as in the cathedral chapters-- was a Reality in which ecclesiastical
institutions (and those whose profession it was to service them) were fully
integrated into the social and political fabric of the world (the saeculum,
after all), and "change" was, inherently, de facto, threatening, Serious Merde
to anyone who was not part of the 98.5% of the population who feed everyone
else and who worked themselves *to death* doing it.
at the Royal level, Patronage was a very large part of what secular
ecclesiastical institutions were all about --the Power to reward your "men"
with choice slots for their sons in collegiate or cathedral chapters, favors
in land deals, whatever.
the power of the Capetian monarchs, in the 11th & 12th c., rested on many
things --yes, there was all that theological stuff about being The Anointed,
but there was also some very real-world, practical, materialistic factors,
like the King's ability to do very significant favors for those whom he
favored and who favored him with their loyalty.
the Capetians developed a network of collegiate churches --vastly expanding on
the foundations of the Carolingian network-- directly under the King's
control.
*he* named the abbot (as well as the other dignitaries and canons).
and Louis VI named his third son, Henry, as abbot of his collegials as the
posts became available --beginning when the kid (a great nephew of Calixtus
II, btw) was 4 years old.
by the time Henry was in his early 20s, he held a baker's dozen worth of
benefices, including being the _abbas regalium abbatiarum_.
when he became a monk at Clairvaux and gave them all up, his kid brother
(Philip, named after the oldest brother who had died at Yahweh's hands) took
them all over.
it was the Family Business, dontcha see?
*that* was a large part of what the "reformers" wanted to change.
might as well move your chair down to the beach and try and keep the tide from
coming in because you say so.
the cathedral chapters of Paris and (to a lesser extent) Orleans, where we at
least have some documentation of what was going on, were each made up of a
network --or networks-- of family/tribal factions, intimately linked to the
network of prominent families in the region,
which any successful King had to play off, one against the other, keeping them
all in line, trying his best to see to it that all their boats were sailing,
more or less, in the direction he desired them to sail in (just like it says
in "The Godfather").
the murders which accompanied the reform efforts at both Paris & Orleans
bespeak of the Seriousness of the Situation and what was At Stake --indeed, in
the later 1120s Fat Louis had what came close to a full-blown civil war on his
hands, as the forces and factions involved nearly got completely out of hand.
i've been trying to make some sort of sense out of all that 1120s stuff for
the better part of 40 years, without, i have to admit, much to show for the
effort.
>Funny, reformers in England later in the C12, at Canterbury and Rochester and
Coventry, seem to want to do the (not-quite-)opposite: replace Benedictine
monks with secular canons.
every place sucks itself out of its own fingers --there probably is a pattern
to it, but i wouldn't pretend to guess what was going on there.
> A Knowles and Hadcock (Europe), like a Pevsner (Europe) would be a wonderful
thing to have...
yes, let us all know when you get those done, Jon, so we can take a look, will
you?
c
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