On Fri, 26 Jul 1996, Richard Landes wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Michael F Hynes wrote:
>
> > History is not a speculative discipline.
>
> history is not a speculative discipline? where did you learn that?
Cut out the ad hominum crap! This is unworthy of a responce.
>
> > I'd love to know what the
> > "commonors (though I find this term hoplessly vague)" thought, but, alas,
> > we have precious little evidence on this.
>
> covers alot of ground, but that need not prevent you from thinking about
> what someone like Leutard is saying by trampling a crucifix and how he
> gains his following, and what the relationship btw his audience and that
> of Raamirhardus was. we actually have alot of evidence on this, and only
> a rigid hostility to any kind of conjecture in doing history prevents us
> from addressing these issues.
"Conjecture"? or making it up to fit a preconceived notion of "what I
think must have happened?" Sometimes, you just gotta throw up your hands
and say we just don't know. Certainly, we can through a careful and
thorough and informed exploitation of the sources come to some tentative
conclusions about those who left little or no record behind. I suspect
that you think we can know far more about such folk than I do. So be it.
We disagree and leave it at that.
> > > > again, your case
> > > may (or may not) be airtight for the canonical distinctions you are
> > > making, but i think you end up losing alot of the social religious dynamic
> > > in approaching it this way.
> >
> > You seem to be implying that you know something about 11th cent.
> > ecclesiological debates that I (or Gilchrist) don't-- if so, I'd
> > like to know what it is we've overlooked. The distinctions I and the 11th
> > cent. reformers made simply cannot be dismissed out of hand just to fit a
> > desired end.
>
> no, i'm suggesting that the larger reform movement in which these
> ecclesiological debates occurred has an important relationship to what is
> happening in extra-ecclesial religious culture. the effort, for example,
> to distinguish as much as possible btw lay and cleric is not merely an
> internally driven phenomenon.
So I was right-- you really don't have anything to add about these
debates. Though i have no problem in principle w/what you say here, I wd
be careful about embracing one-sided explanations-- as Bernie has so often
noted the truth about human motivation is often far more complex than our
contemporary tendency to reduce public figures to allegorical
personifications in a morality play. I wd reject categorically any
explanation of the 11th cent. reform mvt that was reductionist.
>
> > > Moore and (thanks for the reminder) Grundmann
> > > are able to place the reform in a context of popular concerns and
> > > enthusiasms that go a long way towards both explaining its origins and
> > > dynamics. to get a sense of how close the reformers come to donatism
> > > (which is just the orthodox epithet for rigorism), imagine Augustine
> > > reading either Humbert or Hildebrand.
> >
> > The latter smacks of anachronism; but let me indulge you.
>
> thank you. it's just an exercise. it also works well if you imagine
> Augustine as a papal advisor when Joachim's exegesis of Revelation shows up.
>
> > I think he wd
> > have found their position perfectly acceptable. Simoniac orders were
> > valid and so sacraments done by simoniacs were also valid. He may even
> > have understood Humbert, even if he disagreed factually w/him: viz.
> > Simoniacs are heretics and so (even Augustine wd agree if he accepted
> > the position that they were heretics) their orders are invalid and hence
> > so too their sacraments.
>
> i don't follow you here. are they valid or not acc to Humbert?
No they are not.
> to make
> your analogy historical: if Augustine wd have accepted that the traditores
> were heretics then he wd have agreed their orders and sacraments were
> invalid... yes. and then he wd have been a donatist.
No. Donatists objected to the validity of the orders and sacraments of
those who had sinned by giving into the religious demands of the Roman
state. Heresy, in contrast, involves an intellectual error-- a mistaken
belief. The orders and sacraments of the "arians", for example, were
invalid and noone, Augustine included, had any problem with this.
> by the way, there is
> plenty of simony in Aug's day -- the episcopate after Constantine becomes
> an often-court appointed and very wealthy group. even theological debates
> are the subject of huge bribes. none of this seems to have been
> considered by Aug or his known opponents as a serious a threat to the moral
> and spiritual health of the church, certainly nothing to compare with
> buckling under to Roman persecution. so if Aug wd not accept traditores as
> heretics/disqualified, a fortiori he wd not buy the argument that problem
> simoniacs were.
Simony has been the subject of repeated efforts at eradication since the
beginning of the church.. And, I doubt your assertion thaat noone in A's
time found it objectionable-- their definition of simony, however, was, no
doubt, far narrower than the 11th cent. one.
>
> > But to return to the mainstream reformist view,
> > simoniacs violate the laws governing the clergy in the church (and,
> > moreover, threaten its unity)
>
> this is a good donatist argument. from the perspective of the simoniacs,
> it is these new-fangled and radical reformers who threaten the unity of the
> church.
This is emphatically not a "Donatist" arguement. Even in A's day
"scismatics" were viewed in the harshest of terms ansd contumacious
scismatics were considered heretics.
>
> > and so they cannot be allowed to exercise
> > their offices until they are restored penitentially into the good graces
> > of the church.
>
> the donatist demand.
Again, you are quite simply wrong.
>
> > BTW, Simoniacs who preform the sacraments within a given
> > jurisdiction also violate the disciplinary rules of the church, but G VII,
> > et al., never maintained that their sacraments were invalid. The donatist
> > analogy simply cannot be made w/o twisting and distorting beyond all
> > recognition the positions of the parties in the 11th cent. disputes. As
> > for the explanitory pwr of the models noted above that is a subject for
> > another debate. But let it be noted that no matter how attractive an
> > explanitory model may be, it is useless if it is not based on the
> > evidence;
>
> how one interprets the evidence has alot to do with what evidence you base
> it on. if you restrict your evidence to the most strictly ecclesiastical
> material and refuse to speculate about the (far less ample, but far more
> suggestive) evidence concerning the interface btw popular and elite
> culture, you have defined as useless anything that does not conform to a
> highly formalized public transcript. there is more to medieval religious
> culture than that.
Speculation has no place in history-- the rest is a canard.
>
> > and if it distorts that evidence (as describing G VII, et al. as
> > Donastists surely does),
>
> surely. (ps. i said functionally donatist)
>
> > it is worse than useless.
>
> hmmm. you mean bad history?
Yes.
>
> > I have no prob. w/exploring the social roots/responsess to the reform;
> > but be true to the sources!
>
> i try. i just look at a different range of sources in both time and in
> social milieu. and i find often that what appears on the public record is
> contradicted by what a closer examination indicates is going on (eg Ademar
> winning his debate with Bernard of Chiusa; or Charlemagne's coronation in
> 6000 Annus mundi -- dated AD by all the "sources", but known and
> followed by clergy and laity once one examines the ms marginalia
> and the patterns of dating).
>
> rlandes
>
>
>
Now your talking about evcidence!-- the stuff of which history is made.
MFH
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