At 12:16 AM 3/20/99 +0000, you wrote:
>*Was* there something just a *bit* more envolved in Hitler's rise to
>power than a homocidial sociopath simply
simply is not a word for historians to use, like obviously, or
inevitably... even in setting up straw men.
>opportunistically manipulating pure
>historical accident to gain near-absolute power in what was (arguably)
good luck with that argument
>the
>most "civilized" country on the face of the planet?
maybe the most civilized cultural "elite", but what a vast gap btwn them
and the rest of the nation... a gap that hitler not so simply figured out
how to fill.
>The fact--if it is indeed a *fact*--that Hitler had the lance moved
>from Vienna (or even if he simply took any cognizance of it
>whatsoever) I take to be most interesting.
agreed.
>Dear Christopher,
>Your Ravenscroft references sound like the sort of stuff I am
>subjected to every time I approach the till at my local supermarket.
>You are, I believe, confusing two quite distinct things: namely, the
>medieval belief in a divine plan which manifests itself in "signs",
>and the contemporary dregs of that tradition.
this is, i suspect, a reflection of the kind of elitism we practice, often
unconsciously, when we think about the middle ages. if there is quite a
distinction btwn these two aspects of what you admit is the same tradition
(ie finding signs of a divine plan), then it seems to me that we have to
imagine that they both existed back then. just because we have no written
record of the kind of discourse that we find in the tabloids doesn't mean
it didn't exist, nor that it had no impact. there are clear indices in the
crusading material on the popular crusade, that these people were moved to
their radical acts by, among others, the "sighting" of charlemagne returned
to lead them to victory. in other words, the dregs, if that is what you
wish to call it (i wdn't) were there then as well as now. people from all
strata of society get semiotically aroused all the time.
>I don't mean to
>denigrate either one.
what, then, does "dregs" mean?
>In fact, I don't think enough serious effort
>has been put into defining their relationship. It is not a
>negligible phenomenon that an entire television network is devoted to
>"This Week in Bible Prophecy", as if exegesis operated on the same
>footing as the Dow Jones. As much as contemporary "superstition"
>makes me cringe, I would like to know more about the thaumaturgic
>beliefs of the Middle Ages. And if it isn't inappropriate to get a
>little bit personal, I must say my attitude towards the distinction
>occasionally makes me not a little existentially nervous.
indeed it should. we just held a symposium here at the CMS on the
holocaust as a millennial moment, with much attention to the nazis as a
millenarian movt. the opening event was a movie by a german film maker,
Kerstin Stutterheim, entitled "Mythos, Macht, und Moerder", which situated
hitler in the "cultic milieu" of turn of the century germany, with its
theosophy, its search for the grail, its host of modernist and
anti-modernist speculations. the issue, at the end of the day, was: how
did this arcane, twisted search for the ultimate answer, make its way from
the very margins of the culture to the center? how did it become a mass
movt that took over power and the enthusiasm of the german people?
i submit that medievalists might have valuable contributions to make to
answering such questions.
rlandes
Richard Landes
Department of History Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University
Boston University Boston University
226 Bay State Road 704 Commonwealth Ave. Suite 205
Boston MA 02215 Boston MA 02215
617-353-2558 (of) 617-358-0226 (tel)
617-353-2781 (fax) 617-358-0225 (fax)
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http://www.mille.org
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