Pick my dissertation

Ok, so I'm getting this PhD in Church History, see? And I'm wanting to get it in early medieval history, because Europe needs to be re-evangelized, because Rome is falling apart and because there are all these barbarians on the move in western Europe, and in some ways this is reminiscent of the missional challenge the Church faces in the post-modern West. (But don't tell any historians I said that! They hate it, hate it with a purple passion when people value history for something other than its own sake!)

Ok, so I found this sermon by this guy named Martin of Braga. And it's all about why Christians should not cling to various pagan practices. And I'm loving this sermon because it's a window into how ordinary people lived their lives, how they used religion to manage the exigencies of life, and how official Christianity was trying to control the flourishing of heterodox, syncretistic Christianities, especially in the countryside.

And I write this paper on it. And dude, I like, got an A! And I'm thinking, this is going to be the focus of my dissertation. I am so ahead of the game!

And then...

I read this book for my January term class called Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul A.D. 481-751. OK, I read it in that time-honored, grad student, time crunch way. I read the first sentence of every paragraph. But please don't tell any honest-to-goodness historians!

And that guy says...

There was no paganism in early medieval Gaul. The society was Christianized from top to bottom. And all those sermons and penitentials dealing with paganism were just monks dutifully copying stuff down from time out of mind. Had nothing to do with real life.

Durnit.

Well, better to learn that you're full of crap now than when you're defending your dissertation.

So, Gentle Reader, what do you want to know about the early Medieval Church? I need a dissertation topic.

Comments

[Derek the Ænglican]

Dude--Martin of Braga rocks... Here's the thing, though... Don't buy the "Christianized from top to bottom" line.

It's true that one problem with Martin and others writing in and for tribal Europe is that all too often they were copying old attacks on the classical Roman system that they inherited from the Fathers. Thus, the paganism that they describe is stereotyped and follows Roman civic models.

You won't find actual data on early medieval paganism in early medieval ecclesiastical sources (except Adam of Bremen, of course...and doing some serious reading between the lines of lives of the missionary saints but that has its own perils.)

What you *do* find throughout northern writers like Martin of Braga in his "Correctione Rusticorum", Pirmin's "Scarapsus", and--well--all over Aelfric, is attempts to teach basic Christian catechesis. I.e., if everything was so darn Christian, why such a heavy emphasis on basic instruaction...?

Furthermore you can get a picture of what they were teaching *against* by looking at the anonymous vernacular English homilies (how's your Old English?) and records in the lives and letters of the Saints like my personal favorite: Acts of The Synod of 25 October 745, Condemning Aldebert and Clemens.

In short--read through the letters of Boniface and call me in the morning... :-)

[or email me at haligweorc at hot mail]