look forward to meeting you someday, Dennis.

On Fri, 26 Jul 1996, Dennis D. Martin wrote:

> > not my position; and i will guard against sounding like it is. i think 
> > the hostility to lay preaching goes far deeper than mean-spiritedness; it 
> > has to do with the fact that an aristocratically-staffed church which has 
> > committed itself to the stability of an aristocratically dominated 
> > society is stuck with a body of canonical texts which systematically 
> > undermine the claims of an aristocracy to dominion.  they are 
> > understandably nervous about commoners' readings of these texts. how else 
> > can we explain the resistance of so many clergy to the translation of a 
> > text which was itself a translation (and in the case of the words of 
> > Jesus, even in the original was a translation)?  this is not to say that 
> > xnty cannot produce a stable and (reasonably) just society (by its own 
> > standards); but it does suggest that there was more than one person in 
> > medieval europe who found the argument: "we need this for the sake of 
> > social stability" a bit self-serving and not very convincing.
> 
> So a pro-aristocracy bias is one of the handful of biases that cannot 
> contribute to insight and advancing scholarship?  

not my contention. but a pro-aristocracy bias is likely to blind you to 
the cases (legion) where a pro-aristocratic documentation is pulling the 
wool over your eyes. sure it can advance, and it can prevent really 
mis-conceived reconstructions for advancing, but it is very unlikely to 
break free fromt he thrall of the (very few) people who tell us what it 
was like.

> A pro-stability bias 
> does not have equal standing at the bar with a pro-commoner bias?  

i believe i argued that stability and pro-commoner bias are not mutually 
exclusive. it is the aristocratic claim that only they can assure 
stability that makes me uneasy. that, i believe was the official position 
of the augustinian church.

> Having 
> lived in stable society most of our lives, we can afford, perhaps, the 
> luxury of a bias in favor of instability and revolution.  But, looking 
> down the road a bit, stability and prevention of anarchy becomes more 
> attractive to some of us.

granted. and we need to understand how to deal with instability without 
making resort to the kind of "solutions" that the church of the 13th-14th 
cns came up with.
 
> > > > > And, given the last 30 years in Western European and American 
> > > popular culture, I think that a bias stemming from a now 
> > > deeply engrained chip-on-the-shoulder anti-institutionalism is a greater 
> > > danger to scholarly interpretations of the Middle Ages than is a 
> > > pro-authority, traditionalist bias.
> > 
> > harumph! i don't think we need to decide which is worse. let's find a way 
> > to make the insights from both sets of "sympathies" give us a fuller 
> > picture of what went on.  the last thing we need is to retreat from the 
> > insights into social history of the last generation into another round of 
> > conservative, pro-authority, readings of so complex a phenomenon as the 
> > relgious world of the middle ages.
> 
> But aren't you deciding that one is worse in your earlier comments about 
> how a concern for stability by aristocratic leaders messed things up?

don't think so. see above note. it is a false dichotomy: 
popular/subversive; aristocratic/stable 

> > > But then, perhaps I am prejudiced in my assessment of the last 30 years 
> > > in the West!  (Let she who is without bias cast the first stone!)
> > 
> > being of the male persuasion, i don't think i'm allowed to toss too many
> > stones. (ingenuousness not being a stone, but a stick). i consider myself
> > in the annales school of mentalite. rather than dodge-stone, lets work on
> > building some new structures. 
> 
> I prefer to cultivate old structures, myself!  But you are entitled to 
> your preferences as long as you don't dismiss mine.

ditto.

:-)

richard


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%