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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture John Dillon wrote: > On Sunday, 17. June 2007, at 3:12 pm, someone using the name of John > Briggs wrote: >> John Dillon wrote: >>> >>> Today (17. June) was also long the feast day of: >>> >>> Botulph (d. c. 670). B. is a well known English saint not appearing >>> either in the RM or in the "Calendar of saints (Church of England)" >>> page at: >>> http://tinyurl.com/39jchm >>> Whereas the latter is merely part of the Wikipedia and as such not >>> particularly authoritative, a limited consultation of other >>> calendars of churches in the Anglican family has failed to reveal >>> evidence of B.'s being celebrated liturgically now. Nor does he >>> appear in the current Roman Catholic national calendar for England: >>> http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/cn/00/000829a.htm >> >> None of which is of the faintest relevance to this list, which is, I >> would respectfully point out, devoted to medieval religion. > > But this cannot have been the same John Briggs who as recently as 15. > June 2007 wrote: > >> John Dillon wrote: >>> >>> Today (14. June) is the feast day of: > >> Basil [moved to 2 Jan in 1969, presumably because the Orthodox have >> him on 1 Jan...] > > or the same John Briggs who on 30. May 2005 responded to Phyllis > Jestice as follows: > >> Phyllis Jestice wrote: >>> >>> Today (31. May) is the feast day of: > >>> Petronilla > >> Whether she still appears anywhere in any calendar is anyone's guess! > > or the John Briggs who on numerous other occasions has enriched this > list with unsolicited observations and queries about the modern > celebration of various saints of the day, to say nothing of further > occasions when in response to utterances by others he has made > observations of a like nature rather than observing silence in > accordance with the view of relevance to this list expressed above. > > To repeat a statement immediately following the matter quoted by the > John Briggs of 17. June 2007, "Hence my reluctance to include > [Botulph] in a presentation headed "Today ... _is_ the feast day of" > (emphasis added),..." As one knows or could easily ascertain, this > list's formulaic introduction to the feature once known as "FEAST" > and now as "saints of the day" has always employed this present-tense > form of the verb "to be". If the formula itself is relevant to this > list (and numerous contributors over the years seem certainly to have > thought so), then an occasional consideration of its accuracy in a > particular instance is surely not irrelevant. I am not convinced that I am the one being inconsistent (or more inconsistent than anyone else). Indeed, I seem to remember that my first intervention on this list was to complain that "Saints of the Day" was insufficiently medieval - which inevitably brought imprecations down upon my head from the usual suspects! I have never been happy with the notion of twenty-first century religious practice as the starting point for a consideration of "medieval religion". (And certainly not for the use of tenses, on which see below.) My interventions on "Saints of the Day" have been reasonably consistently from a medieval point of view: in 2005 the medieval calendar of the Use of Sarum, in 2006 the medieval calendar of the Use of Hereford, and in 2007 the medieval calendar of the Use of York - with sidelong glances at the Tridentine Roman Calendar and the calendars of the Book of Common Prayer. I am perfectly happy with the present tense "Today is..." - it was the anomalous use of "Today was..." that provoked the form of my intervention, although it was always my intention to give the status of Botulph's feast in the York Use. My other remarks have been taken somewhat out of context: that on Petronilla was a throwaway remark prefacing a discussion of her feast in the Sarum Calendar, and that on Basil was in square brackets - which might be expected to indicate some form of distancing. I was the one who introduced Basil, to indicate his place in the York Calendar. John Briggs ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html