SC - Holy Feast and Holy Fast-OT
LrdRas at aol.com
LrdRas at aol.com
Sun May 7 19:09:21 PDT 2000
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
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