To counter the widespread opinion that believes the Middle Ages, a dark period, because of ignorance, witches, the Church - Master, bloody Crusades and so on and so forth, here we suggest reading an interesting article by Stephen M. Paci. Other
that "dark ages": women heads of convents for men, most age 14 years, preachers of the crusades they read the Koran. Here in the Middle Ages Régine Pernoud, former director of the historic French national archives in Paris, whose books have print runs from bestseller.
[From "30Days", year III, No. 1 January 1985, pp. 56-59]
He wanted to become a librarian and joined the school of Chartres. There, she looked up and met the Middle Ages. Become a librarian but is no longer director of the Museum of the History of France. Currently directs the Joan of Arc Center in Orleans. When not busy with the writing of his books which has given a new look to the Middle Ages, holds conferences around the world. Crowded, and not only by specialists. His books have print runs of bestsellers. Strange, for a scholar. But she is Régine Pernoud.
was a friend of Henry Matisse ("We met often over the last decade of his life. I saw him paint the chapel in Vence. It was extremely attracted to the sacred '). It is of Cardinal Lustiger ('An exceptional man. The young people realize it. It's called familiarly' Lu. 'Tis Pity She's perhaps too much just in the Church of France "). The father is the Dc Lubac ("I think that would suffice the Bible and its books. But I probably should not write it).
In his heart seems to find echo with intelligent curiosity, all that respect the man. First, the Middle Ages, the great love of his life. When he speaks of the Middle Ages
heats. 'I was young I was convinced it was a period of ignorance and underdevelopment. Naturally. The history books dismiss it in a few pages. We will not put up an accounting system that ignores a thousand pages from the log of the budget, but we are surprised that they forget the historical records of cocky a millennium. Even Catholic scholars speak of the Church as if it began in the sixteenth century. Jean Delumeau, in his Le christianisme à mourir goes on, draws a historical summary that leaves out completely the Middle Ages. Curiously, the renewal of medieval studies is carried out by the Americans: they have a more complete view. Europeans are more attentive to issues raised by the art that the dynamism shown by the technique in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But these aspects are crucial for understanding the dynamics of a society as complex. " Complex? Every day we listen to thoughts like 'we are no longer in the Middle Ages' or 'there is a return to the Middle Ages'. "Somebody will be surprised - he adds ironically - knowing that twice in international fora (at OECD headquarters in Paris in 1974 and Dakar in 1980), we turned to medievalists because to study technical solutions for agriculture in the Third World. A medievalist
has even named his book The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages: a revolution carried out without locking up children in the factories because they worked for a salary of hunger. "
Unfortunately for many on the Middle Ages is privileged: it can say whatever you want in the near certainty not to be denied. "It's true: no one ever talks about the freedom and autonomy, which was then given to young people - the majority age for boys was 14 years for girls and 12 -, or the quantity of manuscripts on medicine and natural science emerged monasteries, or the order of Fontevrault who had two monasteries, one for men and one for women, and between the two stood a church, the only meeting place for nuns and monks. This double monastery was placed under the authority of an abbot not, but of an abbess. The latter, by the will of the founder, had to be a widow, that a woman who had had an experience double. All this without causing any scandal in the Church. He was indeed a great success: twenty years after the foundation, this order consisted of 5,000 monks and nuns. And, to complete the picture, adding that the first abbess, Petronilla of Chemillé, was then twenty-two years. "
Women at the head of the male community. Yet, the struggles of some females were not attributable to the Middle Ages in which women were oppressed and treated like slaves. And then the Church, so hostile to women. Fortunately the Council of Trent has given them to possess the soul.
"How silly. Yet I also heard a noted writer maintained that the Church has given his soul to women only in the fifteenth century. And so it would be baptized, confessed, admitted to the Eucharist beings without a soul! In that case, why not animals? Strange that the first martyrs who were honored as saints are women and not men: St. Agnes, St. Cecilia, St. Agatha and many others. It is not surprising that in feudal times as the queen was crowned king in Reims generally (but sometimes also in other cathedrals) and yet always at the hands Archbishop of Reims? In other words, he claimed the coronation of Queen value as that of the king. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Blanche of Castile and have dominated their time, and could not exercise a power only where the undisputed king had died, but even if it were absent or sick. In the Middle Ages, even women from noble families have enjoyed in the Church, and through their role in it, an extraordinary power. Some acted as abbess authentic feudal lords and their power was respected like that of the other gentlemen, some women wore the cross as the bishops, often administered the vast territories which included villages and parishes. This means that some women in the same secular life, their religious functions, exercised a power that today many men could envy. "
surprising to learn that the most famous encyclopedia of the twelfth century is the work of a religion, the abbess of Herrada Landsberg. And, if you read Heloise in greek and latin, another religion, Gertrude Hefti, was happy in the thirteenth century, to move from a position of 'grammar' to that of 'theology', that is to say that after the cycle path preparatory studies, was preparing to move to the secondary level as it was at the university. But women who were neither high nor abbesses dame, nor nuns, but farmers, or mothers, or exercising a profession?
"The documents we have - the scholar answers - surprising picture emerges. Women voted as the men in town meetings and those in rural areas.
"In the deeds is also very common to find married women who act on their own, being able to own and administer their property, for example by opening a store or a business. The proceedings of official inquiries ordered by the populace of San Luigi unprecedented initiative and, moreover, without result, we show a crowd of women exercising the most varied occupations: schoolteacher, doctor, pharmacist, gessaiuola, tingitrice, scribe, miniaturist binder .... "
wonder whether those who hope in good faith that the woman finally leaves the Middle Ages, people want to realize that she can regain the dignity he had the time of Queen Eleanor and the White Queen? The Queen of the Middle Ages did not spare even the horrors of the Inquisition in medieval passion revaluation.
"What makes it different - Madame Pernoud again - a time the other is the different scale of values \u200b\u200bthat permeates the mentality. In elementary history is taken into account, such as respect. Otherwise the town is transformed into the court.
In many ways the Inquisition was the defensive reaction of a society for which, rightly or wrongly, the preservation of the faith seemed no less important than the preservation of physical health today.
"Hence the general disapproval of that heresy at that time raised: the heresy broke a deep understanding which adhered the whole society, and that seemed to break extremely serious. In fact, for the believer and the majority of the Middle Ages, the Church is perfectly within its rights when exercising a power of jurisdiction, as custodian and guardian of the faith. It is general acceptance of sanctions, such as excommunication, interdict, which was a kind of excommunication general. In a whole to compel obedience to those who I was responsible, was suspended every religious ceremony, the bells would stop ringing, the sacraments were no longer administered and this literally made life intolerable for the people. But in front of the Cathar heresy, which rested on an intolerable dualism between a material universe, created by an evil god, and souls, created by a good God, and that goes up to see the supreme perfection in suicide, in 1231 we resorted to the Inquisition. When it was decided seemed acceptable as a means of defense, but like all simple solutions, it was not a solution. Here we perceive a clear example of the ambiguity of history, where in contrast to the image that gives so often, is very difficult to distinguish good and bad. The Inquisition itself was not without a silver lining in the real life practice. It replaced the procedure of inquiry to the procedure of impeachment. But especially at a time when the populace is not willing to play with the heretic, introduced a regular justice. Previously, there was rarely a secular justice, even an outburst of the people, to inflict the punishment of heretics worse. Contrary to what normally is expected, Spain refused the Inquisition. King Ferdinand III, cousin of St. Louis, King of France in the thirteenth century, declared: 'In my kingdom there are heretics. I am the king of three religions: Christian, Jewish and Muslim '. These words are written in four languages \u200b\u200bon his grave and the Catholic Church has proclaimed a saint. With all this, the fact remains that for us the establishment of the Inquisition is the most disturbing aspect of the whole history of the Middle Ages. I was happy that the motto of the Second Vatican Council has acknowledged that the Inquisition was an easy recourse to the temporal power to a spiritual end in the thirteenth century and that if he still had the appearance of oversight of Christians, in the fifteenth and sixteenth century that abused, and using it for political purposes against Jews and Moors. "
The Renaissance is the decline: it was not his friend Matisse to say?
"Just Him - The medieval church was really steeped in the Gospel. It was no longer the case in the seventeenth century. Just look at the different approach to evangelization. The Church of the fifth and sixth centuries had been able to 'go to the barbarians', and after that the abbot of Cluny in 1141 he translated the Talmud and the Koran, was obliged to all the preachers of the crusades to read the Koran. The evangelization of South America, however, was based on the principle that the natives should be men first and then Christians, it was first necessary to inculcate their humanism and Christianity. But the only true liberation is the Gospel, which then creates the humanism and other forms of civilization. Today, that principle seems ridiculous. But again there is someone who says 'before making Christians, we must do to be a free man', as if the Gospel is not the source of liberation. "
they will not be a bit 'too similar to those intellectuals who passing Notre Dame - as recounted in his book Pernoud Queens - they went to a conference entitled:' It was the Middle Ages, civilized? '. He smiles. "We could create a slogan: Middle Ages: the only time that underdevelopment has created cathedrals. Too often the history of the intellectuals who are trying to get them into the scheme already prepared in their small brains. " Madame
Pernoud out the names. "The responsibilities are varied. For the Sorbonne between Plotinus and Descartes, there is nothing. But more must be charged to the Marxist historians: they treat with contempt because the objective data bring into question the existence of their history. Who, in the wake of Marx, feudalism is still opposed to the bourgeoisie - error intellectually necessary if one wants to maintain at all costs scheme lords-bourgeois-proletariat - a method passed by at least 50 years old. Historical materialism read the story in the light of progress: or deny that the Middle Ages were an age of progress or deny Marxism. The capital error of our time is to believe that history is made in Our Cervellini, that can be built to order. "
STEFANIA Ragaglia
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