SC - Florilegium

Wed Jul 7 13:09:19 PDT 1999

Yes, but it is my point. We accuse all other people to have been
cannibals, Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, Chinese, Aborigins, indians of all
sorts. But we are "civilized" people and we dont´t do that. In despite
of it we find the example of my landsman. 1973, and the French
villagers, in the 18-century, and people in Stalingrad, during the War.
I got some very interesting examples how the English had a legislation
to rule the condiciones of swipwrecked people. If they come to land and
they had done a kind of "lottery", to choose someone to kill and eat,
nobody could be punished. But if the survivors took one of them they
could be punished by law.
I have a exciting book about all these English cases: "Journals of
Desmay, Desperate Souls".
I think the tabou about not eating human flesh is very strong, but not
universal and definitive not old.
For some years ago come out a book "The Croisades from the Point of View
of the Arabs" and I read atonished (I already knek Runciman and all
these classical French cronists) how the author, a Libanese living in
Paris, wrote about how the big Christen army (one of the biggest armies
at that time) went into the villages and killed small Muslim babies, to
use them as fieldmeat, a kind of jerky.
I thought it was a typical story about how to accuse your enemy of these
horrible things, but became appealed for his argumentation.
He argumented it was not a moral issue, for the Christen didn´t
considere the "unchristian" as people. The Council of Trento, in 1535,
decided the Indian and the Women had imperfect souls, which needed the
guidance from the "perfect" souls from the European men. This writer
continued with his point and assumed it was the only explanation to how
the Christen Army could survive among enemies lands, without big cattle
wagons and big supplies.
Next time I went to Paris I tried to trace any reference of same issue
by the Christian cronists. I read all the modern editions of the books I
already knew and didn´t find anything. But I did an experiment and took
the same editions of these books, but published in the 17th, 18th and
19th century. I stroke gold, my friends, the most of the books told
frankly and with some lackness of passion or moral judgement they told
about fleas or camels, how some of the knights, the Russian and the
Ungarian knights, use to go to the villages and make their proviants
from muslim babyflesh.
My conclusion is: in the modern editions of this books the references
were expurged, to not "hurt" our sensibility. But it was considered
normal to read about it for our ancestors.
I still don´t know what reason made the modern editors to take this
measures.

Yours
Ana L. Valdés

Laura C Minnick skrev:
> 
> Ana,
>         Interesting thread on cannibalism- I just wanted to note that for
> much of the Western European Middle Ages, various writings and accounts of
> travels and encounters with non-European peoples, the farther afield you
> get, the more likely you are to run into cannibals. Tribes on the
> outskirts of Christendom, as well as any variety of heretics, are
> frequently accused of eating human flesh, particularly for rituals. The
> 'monstrous races', such as the Blemmy (the guys with no heads and their
> aces on their chests or between their shoulder blades), and the
> Anthrophagi (a sort-of dog-human that walks on all fours and eats humans).
> If it is only marginally human, or 'other', it is probably cannibal, to
> the medieval mind...
> 
> 'Lainie
> -
> Laura C. Minnick
> -
> 'A Vaillans Coeurs Riens Impossible'
> -
> "Libraries have been the death of many great men, particularly the
> Bodleian."
>         Humfrey Wanley, c. 1731
> 
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