ELIZABETH AND SHARI | 2006-01-22
In response to my answer to "Shari" below, Elizabth writes:
The "early Christian stories" about a young man and a
young woman marrying and agreeing to celibacy were just
that — stories.
MY REPLY:
"But WHY were they stories? From my point of view the idea of beautiful young white woman and a man with good genes agreeing to remain sterile is not a dream, it is a nightmare. To do it inthe name of Jesus is, again to MY mind, blasphemy."
"Yet here were people who considered this to be the perfect end to a perfect story."
"This may be no problem for you, but from MY point of view it reflects the genetic suicide that is our ideal today, nd I need to know where it came from."
An older couple might decide to live together without
sex — and I'm told that some do — but that didn't
necessarily have anything to do with religion.
Before 1200, women under religious vows were basically
free to travel — as long as they got permission from
their abbess. (Vow of Obedience) Then, the major restriction
on traveling was being able to arrange to do so: a lot of
medieval Europeans, whatever their condition of life,
would keep an eye out for a group going in the general
direction they wanted to go, get some supplies together,
and go. You just had to do it with at least one companion,
for safety, if not for company.
MY REPLY:
"Your and my understanding of history is entirely diffferent from most people's, as we have discussed before. So people have no difficulty imagining a royal baby accidentally switched at birth by someone who was alone with it."
"To you and me this is unimaginable, because we both know that NO ONE was ever alone with a royal baby or any other infant of rank, including its mother. During childbirth the room was FULL of witnesses."
"So when you reveal that women in orders were allowd to travel with only one companion, most people do not understand how extreme this was."
Between 1200 and the early 1500s, there were a few remaining
abbesses who sat in assemblies of nobles, minted money, sat in judgment
over their nuns and servants as well as their secular flocks,
and sent armed men to fight for their kings and emperors.
MY REPLY:
"You point out that the status of women went downhill during the Rennaisance. The Rennaissance really got around with the use of hte printing press inthe early 1500s."
"Yet the history I was raised with said that Europe was mired in stupidity and superstition until we began to read the ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts which had been preserved in the monasteries."
"In fact, the official line was that Islam and the monasteries saved civilization by preserving those ancient documents until us grunting barbarians got hold of them during the Rennaisance."
"Meanwhile, I would like for someone to tell me one redeeming factor of this explosion of ancient literature."
"We never notice, for example, that the Norse on the high seas for months never got scuvy. They ate what they needed to eat. But the Galen Theory of Medicine we learned in the Rennaissance and that Professors of Medicine taught because they knew Latin allowed scurvy to become commonplace."
"When we were taught about Columbus, we were shown a flat-earth map that was ridiculous and we were told that is whwat our grunting pre-Columbian ancestors believed in. That map was actually a Rennaissance map which reflected the Wisdom of Greece and Rome."
"The INTELLECTUALS took that silly thing seriously, but Columbus certainly never had to argue about it seriously among Mariners who had sailed the Ocean Sea."
"Our pagan ancestors had shield-maidens, women owned property, women probably VOTED in pre-Christian Iceland. So it is no accident that you point out that women had the power you talk about UNTIL the Rennaisance closed in."