On Wed, 24 Jul 1996, Richard Landes wrote:
>
> i probably did not make myself fully clear to start with. i know there
> are technical distinctions which permit one to avoid the charge of
> donatism -- these reformers were neither ignorant nor stupid. i'm more
> interested in what one might call "functional donatism", that is, how the
> message was heard by laymen like the patarenes, or the people who flocked
> to hear Henry of Lausanne in Le Mans while Hildebert was down meditating
> on the eloquent ruins of Rome. whether the pope who calls on laymen to
> boycott simoniac and nicolaite priests has a clear distinction in his
> mind that deflects the accusation of heresy may have little meaning to
> his "footsoldiers" down in the trenches of reforming warfare. that
> modern historians have not dealt with the quasi-donatism of the
> "reformers" reflects, it seems to me, an excessive acceptance of the
> reformers own self-definition. when historians do look at this issue
> (like R I Moore), then you get something that looks more like a social
> history of religion and places the papal reform and the apostolic
> heresies of the 11th and 12th centuries on a continuum.
>
> rlandes
>
>
>
There is no donatism quasi, functional or otherwise. Gregory et
al. recognized the validity of the illegal orders but also, in keeping
w/their pwr over the internal discipline of the clergy, denied said clergy
the right to exercise their jurisdiction since their orders were illegally
obtained. Later generations of ecclesiological thinkers would formalize
this distinction by talking about the inner forum vs the outer, but it is
clear that such a distinction was in fact already made long before the
so-called Gregorian reform. This is not the stuff of mere semantics to
avoid charges of heresy, but the very heart and soul of ecclesiological
debates during the 11th cent.-- if someone has offered evidence that the
11th cent. reformers did not mean what they said, I've not seen it. How
laymen unschooled in canon law, ecclesiology, theology and political
theology understood the reformers thinking is, it seems to me, with rare
exceptions a subject only of speculation.
MFH
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