Another one bites the dust

These stories...I am seriously becoming greatly annoyed with the endings. They end so abruptly and with someone dying in some awful way.


Can we not forget there was a talking sausage in one of these. I have seen talking animals and manipulated objects...a sausage? And he stirs the stew with his body? Okay. And how did that story end? "They all died," is basically what it said.

In every single story, whether someone got eaten or someone got killed, my jaw still dropped. I have never read any of the stories that we were given to read. I have never even heard of them. I can understand why though. That cat and mouse story too...can I just rant about that for a quick second? THE CAT EATS THE MOUSE!! What?! That mouse did not have a chance. From day one. Why did that poor thing think it was such a good idea to live with something that normally eats your kind?!

"Oh sure Mr. Zombie, I will live with you because you won't eat my brains." <<That's what that story was like.

Also...people think girls are naive and easily distracted, etc. Read any of these stories. I bet you that almost all of them will have a man who is not thinking with his first brain...and will fall in love with "the most beautiful girl he has ever seen," ENOUGH TO BE BURIED ALIVE WITH HER!

End rant. :)

I found this....take it in. Look at the sausage...just look at it. 

The Tempest

I really enjoyed The Tempest. I don't really like to just read Shakespeare, I feel like I have to watch his plays with the book in front of me to really get the most out of them. When I saw this was assigned, I immediately went to Youtube and found a version of the play to watch, and I really enjoyed this performance.

The way the play portrays magic and wizards, or sorcerers, or whatever you'd call Prospero was very interesting. His powers seem limited - he needs his staff, his books, and possibly his "magic cloak" in order to do anything. Furthermore, when he DOES do something magical, it's through the use of a servant - usually Ariel. Ariel seems fairly powerful, able to turn into wind and fire, appear as a harpy, mimic voices, create sounds, etc. Prospero uses this to great effect, but it's still not really him doing it. The one thing Prospero does actually seem to be able to do, to which Caliban attests, is to give people cramps. Malicious, certainly, but not nearly as menacing as the baby-eating witches we've been studying.

I was a bit confused as to exactly what prompted Prospero to forgive Alonso and company of their misdeeds. It seemed to me, from both the text and the version of the play I watched, that the cause was Ariel saying that Gonzalo was crying into his beard. If that's the case, though, then Prospero's intricately-laid plans to bring them to the island alive, keeping the ship intact and all, don't make sense anymore. Eventually I decided it had been his plan all along to forgive Alonso. Then again, his blustering threats throughout the play suddenly don't carry much weight when he reveals his decision to renounce magic, which may just be the whole point. I think the reader/viewer ultimately has to decide that, which plays into the epilogue where he begs the audience for forgiveness.

Canst thou comprehend?

Literally all I could think about reading The Tempest.

Fun Fact: The song Ariel sings that starts out "Full fathom five" was sang by a group on campus.

So, The Tempest. I was able to catch the jist of it. But I am so caught up in the abbreviated 'the's and other words, and by the curse that Prospero wanted to put on Caliban when he said something that just seemed like he was complaining. Poor guy just wants his land back! Prospero is a manipulating little jerk! In the pre-reading of the play, they were talking about how the characters could be both a villain and a hero, especially talking about Prospero. I'm sorry, but this guy deserves no such title. He made me so angry. The same with the men on the boat. I think my favorite part from scene one was, "Gonzalo: Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard. Boatswain: None that I love more than myself." BURN, GONZALO! Your Boatswain could careless what happens to you and the mighty men on board.

This is going to be a frustrating play to read. I LOVE DRAMA! .....

The Universe is Nuts

So this is pretty late. Sorry! Break threw me off and I only just thought to check, I apologize to anyone who was looking to get their comments in early this weekend.

I found the readings on Julian of Norwich to be uplifting. As a person who's not at all religious, I still couldn't help but admire her devotion and the clarity of her beliefs. I can't imagine what would drive someone to live as an anchorite other than absolute, pure devotion to their religion. I mean I rarely ever come out of my room, but at least I have internet access. I do have to question whether the effects of borderline-solitary confinement on Julian's sanity may have been a factor in her experience of religious visions, but the contents of those visions and the way she presents them make it hard to argue that they don't have value.

Of all the visions we read about, my personal favorite is definitely the hazelnut metaphor. I really like the idea of representing the universe as something very small and precious. Having some knowledge of medieval cosmology, I think this is actually even more impactful to a modern reader, as our understanding of the scale of the universe is so different. The religious implication that it all exists by the love of God is secondary to me, but I still find it a heartwarming thought, and I appreciate the eloquent simplicity with which she presents it. Despite (or perhaps because of?) the fact that Julian's entire world was a small cell and she had no understanding of just how far away the stars were, she managed to present a philosophical perspective on existence that I somehow still find extremely relatable.

I also found Julian's use of Old English really interesting. It gives her a sort of common appeal that might be lost on modern readers unaware of the Norman Conquest (which is sad, but this is what public education does to people). While she was writing 300 years later, I'm going to assume that she was using this terminology in spite of the relatively recent influx of French and Latin words and phrases into the English language. I doubt it was political but it speaks to common English people possibly more than it would to the Norman-descended nobles. It was also fun running into new (or I should say old) words and trying to figure out what they meant. I'm a bit proud of myself for recognizing the word "sely" as being a cognate of "seelie," and Wiktionary even seems to back me up on it. Yay?

He's got the whole world, in his hands!

That's right, God holds the entire world in his hands! All we are to God is a tiny little nut. At least that is what Julian said she saw. This reading was hard to decipher for me because with her deep love and devotion to Christ, I felt I was no where near her level of biblical word use.

I have never really read the bible, my dad would be ashamed.

For this woman to come to such a deep devotion to God, she was almost dead and God came to her and saved her. If God came to me and healed me of all my earthly dilemmas, I would probably spend the rest of my life praising, worshiping, and studying for Christ.

The "let's lock myself away in a tiny box with a tiny window" thing might not have happened though. I feel as if, no matter how little there was in that room, I would still find a distraction to keep me from my goal and purpose of being in that holy cell. I know that sounds bad, but I can not just focus on one thing for more than, maybe, two hours. She did it for years! Just writing in depth about her connection with Christ and his hazelnut.

I suppose my attention span, and what I would be thinking about would  be completely different if I were in medieval times. So this modern day thinking might be making it harder to imagine being in solitude and devoting myself to something spiritual, than it has to be.

Don't Forget Your Sweater (Motherly Love at the Highest Level)

Understanding some of this week's material was...difficult. Julian was great at establishing her ideas, but after a while her message, at least to me, became muddled in repetition of God's love and how God's love is great in this way and that way. It made me wonder if being an anchoress for so many years finally got to her.

The face of true sanity and serenity.
(Source: www.juliancentre.org)

Joking aside, I wonder how Julian's book was received at the time of writing - I couldn't find any era-specific response to it, which was surprising considering a woman (gasp!) had a controversial view of the Church. The God and Jesus as mother of humanity idea is very interesting and makes a lot of sense, even in the context of the Bible and popular Church belief, but was surely put down by male clergy. Or maybe not? It is known that Julian was highly respected in her community, so perhaps her anchoress status gave her extra sway to at least express her ideas.

I do wish, though, that later religiously-prominent figures (looking at you, Luther and Bodin!) had taken a leaf out of her book regarding God's love. Julian focused on love and understanding and left out most of the "punishment of the wicked" rhetoric that pervades many other religious writings, which along with Hildegard's writing and music was a nice change of pace for this class. I'm still confused as to the criteria the Church used to determine who was a witch, when so many parallels can be found between magic users and visionaries. The only major difference I can see is the inherent "badness" of the visions seen by those accused of witchcraft. But, Hildegard and Julian lived quite a while before the height of the witch craze, so maybe that will become clearer as we move on.

And suddenly everything gets really creepy

The excerpts in this week's readings from the Malleus Maleficarum are incredibly disturbing. To me, this witch-hunting handbook is clearly not just the insane rambling of two bloodthirsty religious fanatics (I mean it totally is, it just isn't ALL it is), it's an outline for a clearly defined, meticulously organized system that led to the deaths of countless innocents.

The basis for the Malleus is already established in the readings of the last few weeks. There's already a firm theological and legal basis for the persecution of witches, and people all over Europe, including popes, clearly believe there are untold legions of witches lurking everywhere, conspiring to corrupt Christian civilization. Kramer and Sprenger technically aren't saying anything new here, they're just codifying their own opinions of a fear that's already vastly widespread.

The text itself is full of examples from theologians and court officials from around Germany dealing with the subjects of women, who to the medieval mindset were inferior to men and especially prone to spiritual corruption, and witchcraft. It seems meticulously researched, and even if Kramer and Sprenger made some or all of their examples up, the Malleus presents to the medieval reader what appears to be a scholarly, authoritative, and more importantly, thanks to the Summis Desiderantes Affectibus, papally authorized method of obliterating the perceived scourge of witches from the face of Christian Europe.

Behind the scholarly veneer, though, the text is full of circular logic that provides very little in the way of justice for the falsely accused. For example, accused witches cannot be sentenced to death without a confession of guilt, no matter how much "evidence" is brought against them. Therefore, the accused must be kept imprisoned and tortured for up to a year in order to secure a confession. Even if the accused does not break under months of torture and imprisonment, they are then thrown to the proverbial wolves of the secular courts as an "impenitent heretic." They either confess and the church has them executed, or the secular courts get ahold of them, and, since the secular courts don't necessarily have to deal with the strictures of Church law, things might actually get even worse from there.

This circular logic, though, could easily have seemed sound to the medieval mind. Annihilating witches from this earth in the name of Almighty God was certainly more important than a few innocent human lives. After all, if an innocent was killed due to the system laid out in the Malleus, God would certainly save that person's soul... right?

I find the Malleus so disgusting because it starts on a foundation of pure madness and then proceeds with something a medieval person could easily see as logic and rationality from that point. Kramer and Sprenger didn't start the witch craze, but their contribution to it is so massive and thorough that it's hard not to see them as utterly dominating it.

Germany, 1487: Contradiction Central (with bonus murders!)

Chapter 6. It was just awful. There were so, so many problems with Kramer and Jacob's arguments - from intense misogyny to torture to the obvious exceptions they made to their own rules! I wanted to accuse them of witchcraft by the time it was over - see how they like feeling that helpless against the long arm of the Church. Don't get me wrong, I'm unfortunately fairly certain that some of the horrible things described that witches do were actually done - certain rituals were described very specifically, and in the society of the fifteenth century, if you heard that hurting someone would somehow protect you from the dangers of the world...and if you might be able to get away with it...well, why not try it?

No! The point was to GET AWAY with it...*sigh*
(Source: commons.wikimedia.org)

But i can't imagine a situation in which most of the accused aren't innocent.

The point I'm trying to get at is the Inquisitors were taking witch-hunting way too far. For example, look at the explicit instructions on how far to go and on which days to torture people to force a confession out of them, as well as how often to "change it up," like on page 214 (K/P): "For if the sons of darkness were to become accustomed to one general rule [of questioning or torture] they would provide means of evading it as a well-known snare set for their destruction." The Inquisitors are dealing with, for the most part, regular people, and they've set up what seems to be a sham judiciary system in which no one is innocent of witchcraft - not even themselves. 

There were a few "gotcha" moments reading this chapter that I'm sure Sprenger or Kramer would figure out how to explain away, like this prayer that reeks of magic:  "I conjure you by the bitter tears shed on the Cross by our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ...[many more examples of biblical tears]...that if you be innocent you do now shed tears, but if you be guilty that you shall by no means do so." (K/P, p.215, my italics) Or this magical amulet that is totally religiously acceptable: "...they [the Judge and assessors] must always carry about them some salt consecrated on Palm Sunday and some Blessed Herbs. For these can be enclosed together in Blessed Wax and worn round the neck...and that these have a wonderful protective virtue..." (K/P, p.216) Guys, I thought that all types of magic and magical items were heresy? Then there are the stories of judges being manipulated by witches if the witch can see the judge before he sees her, or of judges being bewitched by the way that witches speak during trial (p.216). But weren't judges protected by God and therefore immune to the wiles of magic? Oh, God must be allowing it to happen again. 

The worst, though, was the section on midwives and those who cure illnesses and disease, who were thought of as just as guilty as a supposedly murderous witch! All because in order to expel enchantments and demons, you have to know how they were made and summoned in the first place. So...what about all those exorcisms performed by members of the Church?

My head hurts.

"To the Fire! To the Fire! To the Fire!" The world's First S'more and Why We Really Need to Duck Tape Bernardino of Siena's Mouth Shut

Sorry, for the long title...

 I'd like to apologize to my blog group who has no choice but to read this.  I know it's a long post. I'll make it entertaining I promise!

*Note: The following comment contains language not suitable for children*

A pope, a theologian, a preacher, a lawyer, and a judge all  into a pub... I mean church... and accuse a bunch of people of witchcraft flash forward to 1692, when America's first total bitch, Ann Putnam (I do not claim credibility for this comment #ilovethe1880s) accusations led to the death of twenty people in Salem, MA. Ann Putnam, you would have made a great addition to Mean Girls.

Anyway... On to the important stuff...

As a history major and human being when I hear the word theologian I brace myself for the worst. However, most of what was covered in Chapter 4 of Witchcraft in Europe from 400-1700 wasn't as dry as I was afraid it would be. I think Kors and Peters did a fantastic job with this chapter. The introduction quickly caught my interest at the first mention of Dante Alighieri who is my favorite author/epic poet. The mention of Canto 20 of his inferno caused me to stretch my legs and grab my copy of the Divine Comedy from my bookshelf to refresh my memory on Dante's take on sorcery. For those that have not read Dante's Inferno here is a link to Canto 20: http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dante/chap20.html After rereading Inferno 20, I felt that I had a better grasp on this chapter. As Kors and Peters point out Dante's condemnation of sorcery and divination may "reflect general understanding at the turn of the fourteenth century" (Kors and Peters 113). So now that I had been sucked into the chapter, I again braced myself for the primary sources. Let me get something straight, I love love love primary sources. To be honest the only religious text that I have ever read and liked was Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Theologians just not my thing, sorry.

When Pope Gregory IX started talking about kissing frogs I was hoping that maybe this was some sort of messed up metaphor... maybe the frog represents the devil or something? As I read on I realized that I was mistaken. It wasn't a metaphor... or a simile. So after rereading the first couple sentences I then thought of fairy tales and my little knowledge of Grimm's fairy tales. Even though I haven't read them yet (so excited to though!!!) I know that unlike Disney movies, they don't end well. If you are sensitive to blasphemous language, I suggest you stop reading now and pick up after the letter. Seriously, I recommend you skip this next part. Annoyed and only slightly relevant rants make blogging more fun. I would like to take a moment and write an open letter to Disney:

Dearest Disney,

Why must you lie to children?  First off, this whole happily ever after thing is unrealistic. Also, while I loved those movies and still do, I know that people only randomly burst in to song in High School Musical (and 2 and 3), not in real life... which is kind of a bummer... but not the point! Sometimes things don't work out in life but in your movies everything always works out, what sorcery are you using? I blame you for my Shakespeare obsession. Also, you based Beauty and the beast off of a true story... you left out some very important parts of the story... but for the sake of time I will pick that up in another post. Disney... there is so much more that I wish to say to you.. but alas, time is short and it's almost 12 (noon), speaking of, why did the magic cast on Cinderella end at 12 midnight as opposed to 12 noon? Sorry, not the point. Disney this discussion is not over.

I will end this very humble and polite expression of my thoughts with this. WTF? (I apologize, that was unfeminine of me) but seriously, wtf... why? (again, my bad, I apologize). Regardless of my anger with you, I will continue to watch your movies as they are the essence of my childhood and life is stressful. Also, even though you "borrowed" (lets face it Disney had every intention of giving the ideas back...) many of the plots for your movies, they are entertaining. Rest assured this discussion is not over!

A Dear, (Yet Slightly Angered) Friend

The relevant part of this post continues here: I apologize for my rant... So yes, Pope Gregory is discussing kissing frogs and how blasphemous that is. But once I got past the similarities and very different outcomes of kissing frogs, I found that Pope Gregory was trying to invoke the wrath of God into all.

The theology faculty at the University of Paris brings up a list of 28... yes... 28, ways in which you can achieve your life's dream of becoming an "nefarious, pestiferous, and monstrous abomination." What I got out of this: rumors are running rampant around campus and some people belief that God wants them to practice arts and sorceries to "honor... and please him."  In a way makes as much sense as Martin Luther nailing his 95 point blog post (Renaissance Style- Sorry, Dr. MB) to the church door.

Bernardino of Siena... (I'll try and keep this short and censored but Bernardo got to me a little bit... though I was thoroughly entertained). First off,  Bernardino (cool name by the way), I'm going to quote you on this (yes, this has become another open letter... sorry).

Bernardino,

On page 135, you stated that following, "after I had preached, a multitude of witches and enchanters were accused." Was this reaction intended? It must have been foreseen (oh wait, don't answer that... actually please do. [If this was a trial and you admitted to that your punishment would be... penance for two years or you could call it heresy and risk execution, just saying...] I feel like you knew how these people would react to your speech. Lets do the math: People naturally do not all get a long + you explain to them that witches and enchanters exist = People think back to all the things that have happened to them or people they know + People begin thinking that perhaps my really annoying neighbor is responsible + the knowledge that hey, I can not only destroy this person's reputation but also ensure that I never have to deal with them again = A multitude of people getting accused of witchcraft after your speech. Makes sense to me. Not saying your responsible but actually, yes, I kind of do blame you. If duck tape had been invented yet then someone should have introduced you to it. Also. "Woe is me!"... seriously? You're upset because you started a witch hunt. Also, you just had to mention that " if any man or woman shall go be accused of such things and if any person shall go to their aid, the curse of God will light upon his house and he will suffer for it" (137). So, I'm guessing the whole State Farm Good Neighbor Policy is out then? I know you have no idea what I'm talking about since it doesn't exist yet, just go with me here.

Sincerely,

A Reader of your works

And now, dear, brave reader of this post...

 

I feel this is the only explanation I need for the strangeness of my post.  

Witches. Witches EVERYWHERE.

I noticed a few repeating themes in this week's readings. One in particular was the subject of "night rides" in which witches perceive themselves to go traveling across vast distances, accompanied by other witches and a pagan god, usually Diana. Regino of Prum, Burchard of Worms and even Aquinas reference these night rides in almost exactly the same terms. Regino and Burchard seem to refute the possibility, saying they're illusions cast on witches by demons, but Aquinas doesn't comment on whether or not such things actually happen. These texts are only a few centuries apart, with Regino writing first. I have to wonder whether these beliefs in night rides were so widespread, and Christian theological beliefs so consistently aligned against them, that all three writers would have addressed them separately in similar terms, or if they had in fact read each other's works and were committing some kind of theological plagiarism. That said, I doubt plagiarism actually mattered much to medieval theologians - what does a little copy and paste here and there matter so long as it's the word of God?
The other major theme I noticed was impotence. Medieval thinkers spent an awful lot of time dealing with the idea that the infliction of impotence was one of the foremost uses of magic. It's very easy to look at this and think that medieval people were just incapable of accepting that they were having their own set of problems and were trying to cast blame elsewhere, but the sheer amount of thought and argument put into "proving" that it was the work of witches and sorcerers and demons and whatever else suggests to me that there was a very strong belief in these powers. It wasn't that they were casting blame for impotence onto things they invented on the spot. Rather, belief in witches was already so strong that if someone was impotent, it MUST have been a witch's fault. I think this is something totally alien to most modern readers who haven't grown up with that kind of cultural paranoia. The closest thing I can compare it to in modern memory is the Red Scare in the '50s, but I don't think even that approaches the perceived pervasiveness of witchcraft in the medieval mindset.

As a side note, I thought it was funny how light most of Burchard of Worms' suggested punishments seemed to be - when he's specific, it's mostly just bread and water for a few weeks. That said, he's not specific very often. I'd be interested to know exactly when the "appointed days" for penance are, and what exactly that penance was supposed to entail.

Help me, Lawd! Help me!

Crazy chapters, right? Some of these readings could even make one think that witch craft was and IS real.

Have you ever been skeptical of the thought of witch craft or magic? The idea has always been there, but I have never really thought it were real because I thought of magic as; wands, cauldrons, and broom sticks. As of recent, I started thinking about magic as rituals or seances. Yeah, I have seen Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and The Wizard of Oz, but I never thought anything of it.

The fact that these readings are so in depth about what a magi, witch, or wizard has done and what their punishment should be, makes me rethink my ideas about magic being real. The one reading, specifically, that has made me rethink my ideas about magic, is the passage from Buchard of Worms. His crime and punishment passage was so in depth with what someone has done and what they should do to heal themselves and come back to Christ, it made me wonder if magic was actually real, or if these people in the 13th century were on drugs or really gullible.

Magic involved herbs and sayings in the 13th century-- also illusions and spells, but it also involved demons. To believe in demons, most people were to believe in God as well. The reason magic may not be believed in so much as in the 13th century may be that more people are too distracted to believe in something or just won't believe in something they can not see. 

God and following astrology is basically all that the people in medieval times made time for. There was not much to take up their time, but church and scripture was always there. With the fear of the wrath of Christ, there was a fear of demons deceiving and taking over the population of the earth. This caused a huge fear of evil being used and walking the earth. One passage in chapter two was a story about a resident leaving food out for "nightly visitors." The residents believed that the visitors were their neighbors, but they were demons who made the home owners think they were their neighbors. This idea scared a lot of people and made them more cautious about Magic and casting spells.

Christianity and the way times were and how the times are now, made a difference on the belief of magic, demons, and even the power or existence of God. Do you believe in magic?

Whether you should do penance (Spoiler: the answer is "yes")

Reading chapters 2 and 3 of the Kors/Peters book, all I could think was, "For people who condemn demons and magical practices, you saints and holy writers sure know an awful lot about the particulars of how they interact with humans."

"Hey, so how do I summon the Devil? Oh, uh, it's just to make sure no one will do it."
(Source: www.traditionalcatholicmass.com)

The evolution of discovering the prevalence of magical practices, addressing them, and universally condemning them I found particularly interesting.  Before the 14th century, magic was considered "singular and episodic, one more manifestation of Satan's usually unsuccessful attempts to tempt mankind from orthodox belief and practice." (p. 59) And yet we have a prominent figure in early(ish) Christianity, Thomas Aquinas, part of whose writings in the 13th century were meant to "explain precisely how it was possible for demons to influence human actions." (p. 88)  It seems like the clergy during this time period wanted magic and demons to be compartmentalized, dealt with, and left behind as they moved on to more important things.  If they described exactly how these "episodic" incidents happened, for example the nature of demons and the extent of how they were able to tempt man, then righteous men (I almost typed "and women" there regarding 13th century Christianity, silly me!) would rise up against any temptation, ever again, because they would know how a demon would go about tempting them.

Speaking of my "and women" comment up there - there were so many descriptions in these chapters of how women were the ones who were usually corrupted by magic, and men only occasionally, and only if they were "weak." Not cool, people. Get over your superiority (even though I know you won't for hundreds of years. If that.)

Considering the eventual acceptance of magic as a widespread (or at least, more widely noticed) event, I was very surprised to read about the penances for various sinful magical practices. It is firmly established that magic and communing with demons is a sin of varying degree based on the results of the magic, but I was expecting more "Burn the heretics at the stake!" and less "Eat bread and water for ten days or so."  In fact, in some cases using demons seems okay - even though it's a grave sin, it might be permitted to use them and then just ask for forgiveness, even if you know you're sinning. (p. 89, paragraphs 2-3) Further, according to Augustine, "all divinations are to be avoided; although physical death ought not to be inflicted without grave cause." (p.89) I wonder when the pivotal shift occurred to go from (comparatively) light punishment and repentance at this time to death by burning in the 17th century.

"Have you ever felt like you were just born in the wrong time period?"
(Source: www.whenintime.com)

Another thought:  while invoking Christ or the cross for various incantations or charms did happen in our other readings from Keickhefer, I feel like the magic in those readings was much more generally secular in nature.  One of the big themes throughout Thomas Aquinas' writing selections was that all magical things come from demons, and all demons and magics are only permitted to act by God. I thought this was an interesting rationalization or analogy for how bad things are allowed to happen to good people - everything is God's will, be it good, bad, or ugly. Whatever you have to say to make yourself feel better, Mr. A.

...was it God's will that I posted a cat video?