(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

From Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, in the section dealing with Christian attempts to eradicate the "rustic" paganism of the illiterate country folk once they were done with the priesthood and temples in the cities:

"Take the learned Agobard of Lyons, bishop until his death in 840: he writes a treatise titled, though perhaps not by the author, 'Against the stupid opinions of the masses,' in which he begins, 'In these parts nearly everyone, noble or lowly, citified or rustic, old or young, thinks that hailstorms and thunder are within the control of man'; and from here he goes on to describe a universal belief in practitioners called tempestarii or weather-men who can be called in to control the source of the phenomena, which most folk say come from a sky-land called Magonia and are born along celestial ships.

"Now this, says Agobard, is madness, a great stupidity; and the most profound stupidity of all which he recently witnessed was the exhibiting of four people tied up and held in the public prison who, it was advertised, had accidentally tumbled out of the ships!"

Am I the only one who thinks that castaways from weather-controlling skyships into Dark Ages France would make a great basis for a fantasy short story? I'm filing this one away for later.

Comments

[helenseidolon.livejournal.com]

I think I actually skimmed that book for my undergraduate thesis. I didn't get much out of it. The author came up often in class discussions as well, but I don't think my prof thought much of him.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just that so much would probably strike a specialist as obvious? Maybe it's the lack of focus (he does tend to roam all over the place)?

For a layman like myself, it's a cut above the usual fare. Much of what he states directly contradicts my high school stuff, where paganism was -- and I believe often still is -- portrayed has having evaporated almost instantly after Constantine's conversion.

But as an expert on the subject, maybe you could recommend to me some more rigorous books on the Christianization of Europe? It's a topic I'm really interested in.

[helenseidolon.livejournal.com]

You bet! The prof I had at McGill before she left specialized in Late Antique Christianity, and I had a grad seminar with her. It's definitely not my main area of research, but I can list off a few books (that I liked and didn't).

Her reading list was: (I own all of these books, by the way - you're more than welcome to borrow them)

Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. He's the founder of Late Antique studies. I didn't like his style - very rambly - but it's the best overview out there.

Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court A.D. 364-425. By John Matthews. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. I'm in love with John Matthews. His style and argument are clear and evident throughout.

The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire. By Michele Renee Salzman. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 2002.) Interesting and unusual. It's a statistically-based book trying to see what we can 'objectively know' about Christianization of the upper classes. Misses its mark, but an interesting attempt.

Jill Harries: Law and Empire in Late Antiquity. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. ix, 235. $59.95.) Less about Christianity, more about Law.

John F. Matthews. Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Extremely technical. Only he could make this subject even vaguely readable.

GILLIAN CLARK. Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles. New York: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press. 1993. Eh, it was okay. Pretty basic, but not bad.

The Virgin and The Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity. By Kate Cooper. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996. Terrible, terrible history. Maybe some of the stuff she pulls flies in other disciplines, but I thought it was far more polemic than researched.

These are books I read and enjoyed when researching my thesis (I don't own them):

Brown, Peter. Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1995.

Brown, Peter. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press: 1992.

Haas, Christopher. Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict, Ancient Society and History. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Lots more interesting articles which I probably have somewhere, if you care.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I think that'll do me, for a start. I'll try to look those up when I get back into town.

[ginkaruja.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a comedy. o.o,,

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I was thinking more fanciful -- whimsy as opposed to outright comedy. But it could work as an out-and-out comedy as well.