SC - Food guessing game for demos

[Lee-Gwen Booth]

In a message dated 5/4/00 11:51:53 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lcm at efn.org 
writes:

<< Sigh. Did you not have your caffeine today Ras? ;-)
 
 Christianity thoroughly permeated lives of everyone in western Europe in
 the Middle Ages- not just the nobility. >>

While the use of or abstention from certain foods on certain days is 
appropriate for this list and most likely was given lip service by noble 
households. Such a topic can be discussed in detail I have no doubt but only 
if 'custom' is given depth by pointing out the ACTUAL background for the 
feast/fast days along side of the OFFICIAL Church reason. 

I have had my coffee. But I believe your 'theory' about the pervasiveness of 
Christianity during a large part of the SCA beyond it's immediate influence 
on the nobles and the wealthy is simply based on inaccurate and questionable 
sources. Those sources are the writings of the priests, holy men, nobles and 
others who were actually a part of the spread of that particular religious 
practice. The reality of the matter is that preexisting pagan practices 
almost without exception underlay every major holiday during the middle ages. 

For instance, Christmas Day (which was not a major holiday in the middle 
ages) was, for centuries before Christianity came into the picture, the 
birthday of Mithra in Rome, The Green Man in England, the birth of the Sun in 
many of the rest of the European and other cultures, The Light in the 
Zoroastrian religion and the birth of Buddha and Krishna in India. All of 
it's attendant 'ceremony' is almost exclusively borrowed from other faiths. 
The same holds true for Yule, Easter (Oestra the goddess), St. Brighid's Day 
(Brigid the goddess) and many of the other saint's days. The Church adapted 
rather freely from the actual practices of the people she sought to 
subjugate. 

I am not dismissing Christianity as a viable religion but as a non-Christian 
I see little actual influence during the middle ages beyond those in power. I 
see no influence whatsoever on the peasantry regarding the days they chose 
for either celebratory or purgative practices.

There are many sources which totally debunk the myth of the Church as a 
religious practice having any significant influence on the peasantry. 
Planting, harvesting butchering and slaughtering, etc., were based on the 
phases of the moon and the passage of the stars and planets. While I agree 
that the cloistered scholars willy nilly assigned their own saints days to 
the already established natural cycle, this does not seem to me to be a basis 
for assuming that they had any real 'influence' on the masses who used those 
holy days before the Church was a twinkle in Rome's eyes.

However, given the influence it had on the ruling classes, I would be most 
interested to know what direct influence, if any, it had on actual feast 
preparation outside well known Lenten practices (which themselves seem to be 
derived from specific practices non-Christian rites practiced during Roman 
times).

Ras