“It is a Western conceit,” O’Donovan writes, “to imagine that all political problems arise from the abuse or over-concentration of power; and that is why we are so bad at understanding political difficulties which have arisen from a lack of power, or from its excessive diffusion.” He cites the example of Somalia, admitting that “such power as there has been has, as a matter of course, been abused.” But a more crucial problem is that “political power was never strong... Read more
A helpful Christological response to my “blood and soil” post from Jack Kilcrease of Marquette University: “I’m currently working on an article about Gerhard Forde and the Radical Lutherans concept of discontinuity. They want between the law and gospel for there to be total discontinuity. Granted, this is to overcome Thomism and the belief that a sinner is potentially a saint. But it also means that God abandons his faithfulness to creation and his word of Law. “My solution is... Read more
De Lubac traced the development of the terminology and concept of “supernatural” in the theologians, and Bartlett finds confirmation of de Lubac’s thesis by looking at hagiographic writings (collected in the 68 volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, published from 1643 to 1925!). He found no use of the word before the mid-13th century, and even then the word is not very common. Tracing the boundary between natural and supernatural was particularly important as the process of canonization developed. Saints had... Read more
One of the virtues of Robert Bartlett’s The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (aside from a chapter on dogs and dogheads) is his discussion of the medieval puzzle concerning land and sea. By the four-elements theory, earth was the densest element, and thus should gravitate to the lowest point. Why, then, isn’t the world completely covered with water? Why doesn’t the land sink? Godfrey of St. Victory answers this question with a direct intervention from God: “what... Read more
Ratramnus, most famous for his contribution to Eucharistic theology in his debate with Radbertus, was asked by a priest, Rimbert, whether the dogheads were human. Rimbert’s interest was evangelistic: If human, dogheads should be evangelized. Seems so, Ratramnus said. They live in villages, practice farming, wear clothes, and even keep pets of their own. What most distinguishes them as human, though, was rationality. For Ratramnus, though, rationality is not merely mental; rather it is the capacity for “art” that manifests... Read more
Everyone in the Middle Ages knew that St. Christopher was a dog head, a man’s body with a dog’s head. A Welsh poem about King Arthur told of his battle with the dogheads near Edinburgh: “By the hundred they fell” before Excalibur. But where did they live? A few said Scandinavia, but most believed they were an Oriental race. When William of Rubruck traveled from Constantinople to Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol empire, in the 1250s, he was surprised... Read more
Reflections on a class discussion earlier today about place, our connection to the ground, and gnosticism. 1) Blood and soil are “powers” that can and have dominated human life, and caused lots of human misery. 2) Jesus overcomes those powers. We are identified by water and feast, not by blood or color or place. 3) YET (here’s where my thought is undeveloped): Jesus doesn’t just overcome and send the powers packing. He pacifies and reconciles powers; He turns them to... Read more
Psalm 105:28-36 lists the plagues. Some of them. But not in the order they happened. Instead of the ten plagues of exodus, there are only seven (darkness, water to blood, frogs, flies/gnats, hail, locusts, firstborn). Seven strikes a chord, as does the fact that the summary begins in darkness (reversing the first day of creation) and ends with the death of firstborn sons (reversing the sixth day of creation). Psalm 105 tells the story of the plagues as a reversal... Read more
Niall Ferguson nicely summarizes the critiques of empire by dividing them between critiques that focus on the effect on subject peoples and critiques that focus on the effects on the subjectors. The first critiques, which focus on the effects on the subject peoples, can take a nationalist or a Marxist form. As Ferguson puts it, “The central nationalist/Marxist assumption is, of course, that imperialism was economically exploitative: every facet of colonial rule, including even the apparently sincere efforts of Europeans... Read more
Obvious as the answer may seem, it is a question worth asking because the word has been so overused that important distinctions are being lost. Stephen Howe writes: “Ideas about empire have . . . seemed to spread and multiply beyond all limit or control. ‘Imperialism’, as a word has gone imperial; ‘colonialism’ has colonized our languages . . . They have come to be used, at the extreme, to describe anyone’s, any group’s, or anything’s supposed superiority, or domination,... Read more
Leithart
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