tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post1908886117154114929..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: "And the fervor of his devotion increased so much within him that he utterly transformed himself into Jesus through love and compassion."Cord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-11939270697501339062009-06-19T01:02:45.704-04:002009-06-19T01:02:45.704-04:00My immediate reaction was to think of "charla...My immediate reaction was to think of "charlatanism" if you will: stories of false Christs, false prophets, false seers etc all over the High Middle Ages, historically and literarily, at least in the first story. <br /><br />As Jeffrey, and you now, have noted, the imitatio Christi produces both those who imitate from devotion and those who imitate for other, more nefarious, reasons; an analogue might be that when determining the nature of the saint and the nature of the possessed, there is often in medieval manuals not a great difference in behavioral manifestations.<br /><br />It is interesting that you juxtapose the two tales of crucifixion, of imitating Jesus to each other...very intersting, not sure what all to make of it, but food for thought.theswainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05919025515524894537noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-46378223833549457742009-06-17T08:14:27.547-04:002009-06-17T08:14:27.547-04:00These are rich materials to ruminate over. The con...These are rich materials to ruminate over. The conjunction between sanctioned Beatrice of Ornacieux and the heterodoxy performed by the would-be Jesuses is likewise provocative.<br /><br />The sandwiching that you point out of incredulitas by Jews with that of Christians seems fairly standard in these episodic lists. The academic Simon of Tournai appears in Gerald of Wales’s Jewel of the Church just before the mocking Jew of Oxford, declaring “God Almighty! How long will this superstitious sect of Christians and this modern invention endure!”<br /><br />Likewise, the association of Jews with necromancy and other "dark arts" lurks in the stories I've been looking at as well. Thus of Hugh of Lincoln Matthew Paris writes:<br /><em>After the boy had expired, [the Jews] took his body down from the cross and disembowelled it; for what reason we do not know, but it was asserted to be for the purpose of practising magical operations.</em><br />I think the reason for this linking is pretty clear in the materials you present: all forms of unbelief seem to collapse into one, so that Jewish dubiousness and pagan (in the sense of "countryside," nonstandard, unorthodox) practice are placed in the same space.<br /><br />PS I like that you use "unbelief." I've been inspired by <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/61333587&referer=brief_results" rel="nofollow">John Arnold's work</a> to use it as well, since he gives it such a capacious and flexible definition: "the absence of something expected … divergent, ‘superstitious’, heretical and skeptical viewpoints … intriguingly varied forms of dissent and divergence from the orthodox norm.” It's also a pretty good translation of incredulitas.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com