Posted on 01/30/2011 2:26:12 PM PST by fabrizio
The lack of knowledge of Medieval and early modern social and economic systems is nearly complete, with knowledge of American history exiting just behind.
Ploughing is hard, heavy work even with a modern steel plough, and haying even with modern equipment (mower, rake, stacker, baling machine) is the hardest work I've ever done. That includes roofing, laying drywall stone, and setting railroad ties for retaining walls! They say it keeps you young - I say it keeps you tired.
Moderns don't appreciate just how difficult (and deadly) pre-industrial farming was.
“Is this article a problem with terminology? By “Anglican,” do they really mean Episcopalian?”
To my knowledge, there is no Episcopal church in England.
The ECUSA is a close relative of the Anglican church.
The ECUSA has been taken over by gays and neo-Marxist, and
many traditional Episcopalians have flocked to the American Anglican church, as their service was the most closely related.
Actually, many aligned themselves with the church in Africa.
After I left the USA for good in 2005, I found the Catholic church was my only choice in both Slovakia, and now in The Philippines.
OK more precisely. Does that mean the pope is endorsing Anglican practice?
Well that is certainly the traditional interpretation, but a lot of historians now are questioning that. Elizabeth I was a monarch who indulged in a great deal of vacillation. How much she really intended to use marriage as a weapon is questionable. Certainly the transition to James after she died was not without peril.
Can you explain that statement further?
When I said "remote", I meant in a social rather than a physical sense. Monasteries, like most of medieval society, was very socially stratified. There was the Lord Abbot at the top, who lived very well judging by the houses I've seen, there were the monks, the lay brothers, and the peasants who toiled for them. Large parts of the monastery were off-limits unless you were in the correct part of the hierarchy - for the ordinary folk for sure it was not "their" monastery.
I understand that you have to be careful bringing modern assumptions to the medieval scene, but modern thought processes and analysis are perfectly fair. After all, if we thought like medieval people now we would be clammering for an end to these twisted experiments in democracy and hygiene! :) With the benefit of hindsight and a detached view we might even be better able to understand what was going on than the people at the time.
You seem to be saying that the Monastery was no better than any other large landowner of the time. That may be true, but do we applaud it because of that? My answer is that therefore the whole system needed to be swept away - as was indeed happening. The great landholders were in decline, had been for some time. The new power was the rising mercantile classes - the bourgeoise in London, as you pointed out. To make any progress, the old order has to be dismantled. In that sense, the dissolution of the monasteries was a bit like the Highland clearances. It was unpleasant and very traumatic for the people who were still clinging to the old way of doing things, but it had to be done. I know that's harsh, because a lot of people suffered a great deal, but come on - would you want to hold onto a feudal organisation of society for ever more?
Of course I realise that there were many monasteries and some were much better run than others. Some were very decent and tried to live up to their calling, but more were no better than any other rapacious landowner. But it's a religious house. More should be expected of it than that. If it is the same as secular society, what us is it to God?
Historians do that. It's the way they get published and noticed, upsetting each month all the things that they said the month before.
Heh...yeah true.
Basically what you're saying here is that the entire system was bad and deserved to be smashed (does that include all "stratification"? Uh-oh.) But how is it a good thing that the King decides to smash only the Church and not his nobility and gentry (or the merchants in London?) This is theft pure and simple, theft from people that the King saw as his political opponents (he sent Thomas Cromwell around to collect 'evidence' to justify his actions, and Cromwell the dutiful servant obliged with 'evidence'. Given Cromwell's overall conduct, I am a bit suspicious - but of course in the end none of it did him any good.)
"They had it coming" is no explanation when it's clear that everybody "had it coming" but only the Church got it.
This was a serious injustice to the clerics who were administering their property according to the laws and rules applicable to everybody at the time. It was a serious injustice (and often terminal) to all the people who depended on them -- who were abandoned by Henry and only belatedly dealt with by the Poor Laws (which were largely ineffectual til revised by Elizabeth anyhow).
Evil is evil is evil, and justifying it by saying that the old order had to go is wrong.
‘Can you explain that statement further?’
Sure. The cretins now running the public schools in the US hate Western Civilization and American History and teach it very badly. As a result most folks today are ignorant of the origins of their institutions and the cost of developing them and only remember some ideological slogans about it.
‘Does that mean the pope is endorsing Anglican practice?’
It means that the Church is considering having a Rite which will generally follow high church Anglican liturgical practice.
‘After all, if we thought like medieval people now we would be clammering for an end to these twisted experiments in democracy and hygiene! :)’
Actually that seems to be exactly what the radical forces in the West seem to be doing these days.
Does the Catholic church not have an equivalent Rite that it uses now?
"All we are saying, is give soap a chance!"
The clerics were NOT administering their property according to the laws and rules applicable to everybody at the time. They had their own laws and rules and those were not the same as English common law. So how is that fair?
If evil is evil is evil, and justifying it by saying the old order is wrong, then why did the American "patriots" overthrow their lawful King and dispossess/disenfranchise or drive out all the loyalists?
No, there is no Anglican Rite in the Catholic Church, just an English translation of the ‘novus ordo’ Roman Rite. Before the 1960’s we used the Latin Tridentine Mass, like everyone else in the Roman Rite in those days.
So the Vatican is authorising the use of an Anglican style rite now?
‘So the Vatican is authorising the use of an Anglican style rite now?’
No the Vatican is considering authorizing the use of an Anglican style rite now.
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