Bill Netherton wrote:
> Question one, then: were such multiple
> sexual relationships practised by English and Celtic Christians this late;
> were they sanctioned by the church; and if they were, when were they
> forbidden?
I am more concerned with how they were supposed to be acquainted with the
Old Testament during the 7c. As for marriage, the English Church doesn't seem
to have stuck its nose into that issue until the 1070s, unless Stenton has been
corrected since 1970. Previously, marriage was a secular contract. Early
Anglo-Saxon laws do, however, attempt to abolish pagan marriage rituals (cf.
Laws of Ine, ?Theodore's Penitential).
The Church's concern with human sexuality generally seems to have been an
innovation of the high middle ages. In the period to which you refer, churchmen
would've been more concerned with people who thought the king was Woden's
grandson.
> Question two: Why was astrology
> permitted (and at times, seemingly, promoted) by the Church in medieval
> times, when fortune telling is so clearly forbidden in the Hebrew
> Scriptures?
Why, for that matter, where they still reading the Gospel of Nicodemus? Our
notion of the "canonical" dates from the Reformations. A fundamentalists'
literalism requires standard editions. It also requires a sense of literalism.
Remember: "the letter kills." The Quadriga allowed great creativity in
interpreting difficult texts. Are there any references to pork in the Caterbury
Tales?
Previously, apocrypha, patristic writings, and horoscopes would all have
been valid sources of information, which is not to say that each of the above
would have been wqually unproblematic.
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