> From: Dr. Karen Jolly [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>
> Maybe--which means that, Donatists aside, they can be re-admitted.
> I keep thinking of the monk of St. Gall's tale of the Vikings who came
> down to the Frankish court at Easter to be baptized--the same ones year
> after year, as it turns out. When the Franks ran out of nice white
> baptismal robes, they hastily made some out of rough cloth, whereupon one
> of the Vikings complained about the quality compared to previous years--he
> came every year for 20 years, perhaps just to get a new clean shirt (and a
> bath?). Apocryphal as the story may be (given the author's jaundiced
> view), it still is revealing of attitudes toward converts and their
> sincerity.
>
I love this story, and I think it illustrates the pragmatic approach
most people took towards matters of religion and faith: if it works, do it.
If you don't get the answer you need from one god, try another.
The medieval Irish comments on the Tuatha D/e Danann reveal serious
attempts by the scribes to find an acceptable role for these erstwhile
deities in the Christian cosmology. Some were made into saints (for example,
Bri/d into Brigid, Lug into Lugaid). Marina Smyth (_Understanding the
Universe in Seventh Century Ireland_) suggests that the Irish monastic
thinkers held onto the concept of the Antipodes as a parallel world existing
under this one as a way of holding onto the Tuatha De/ Danann without
demonizing them. One idea that survived into the folk tradition was that the
Tuatha De/ Danann were angels who did not side with Lucifer but did not
fight for God's side, either. So they escaped hell, but they were obliged to
leave heaven. Like angels, they had mysterious powers, but they were weaker
than and subject to the Creator God. Of course, some did in fact equate the
gods with demons.
Francine Nicholson
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