Ignorantia Sacerdotum: Spirituality and Christian knowledge, c. 1300

In sorting out articles in the seemingly endless dissertation files this morning, I came across a copy I’d made of John Pecham’s Ignorantia sacerdotum of 1281, printed in Shinners and Dohar’s Pastors and the Care of Souls. It’s quite an amazing document, and I think would make an excellent short reading for a medieval survey, as it offers numerous insights into medieval spirituality, the knowledge and engagement of the congregation in matters of Christian doctrine, the desire for church reform and clerical education at the highest levels in the English Church, and a rather precise definition of medieval Christian belief as delineated by the highest church official in England. Certainly a top-down picture, but inasmuch as it is a reactive, prescriptive one, it retains considerable value.

And there are linguistic issues as well. The core of Archbishop Pecham’s order is that once every quarter the parish priest “should personally explain or have someone else explain to the people in their mother tongue [my italics], without any fancifully woven subtleties, the fourteen articles of faith, the Ten Commandments of the Decalogue, the two precepts of the Gospel (namely the twin laws of charity), the seven works of mercy, the seven capital sins and their fruits, the seven principal virtues, and the seven grace-giving sacraments.”  Pecham then goes on to give a summary of each of these sections.

Parzival’s Sin

[Cross-posted from Quod Sumus. Happy Cinqo de Mayo!]

What was it? Scholars have long lost themselves in debates over the precise nature of Parzival’s sin at the Grail Castle. He is visiting the castle; life is going well. He is learning about knighthood, he is beloved and respected. He has life figured out, and he is about to achieve the greatest, most coveted spiritual prize of all. He is at dinner with the gravely ill Fisher King, and the Grail procession commences–overwhelming the senses, it is so entrancing.  So entrancing that Parzival ignores everything and everyone, as he is fixated on the Grail and the Grail Maidens.  And at that moment, though he didn’t realize it, he had committed a great sin, which in due course would be exposed in the most public setting possible, King Arthur’s court. His sin was that he failed to speak, to ask a question of his host. It is only at the very end of the story that we learn what the question was–”what ails you?”  It was the crowning achievement to his insidious self-indulgence and moral laxness, because it betrayed his utter and complete disregard for others’ well-being. Rather, he was only focused on his own gain, his own material interests–a state of mind first revealed in his abandonment of his mother, and then in his brutal killing of his kinsman Ither. Horrified, Parzival demands to know what he can do to remedy the situation. And he is told that there is nothing he can do. His mother and Ither are both dead, and he will not find the Grail Castle because he had proved unworthy. And at that moment, Parzival snaps. He flees the court, and loses his faith, his joy, his love, and everything that had made him what he was.

Except, that is, his physical prowess; tales began to spread of a mysterious knight who would show up at battles and tournaments, crushing all in his path, only to fade into shadow when the clash of arms had subsided. And that was how he lived, for some years, until called to repentance on a chance encounter.

Random news you can use: Iraqi WMDs, Caravaggio, American Digger, Edward II…

I haven’t done a “random news” post in a while, so here’s a round up some items that have caught my eye in the last few days.  Some are links originally posted by friends on Facebook, others are more random.

First–I grew up reading H. E. Marshall’s An Island Story and An Empire Story, and was pleasantly surprised to run across this version she did of Guy of Warwick (I gave a paper on aspects of the story over the weekend, so I have the tale very much on the brain).  Great fun, and worth reading.  See the TEAMS edition of the Stanzaic Guy of Warwick for more information on the tale itself and a good edition of the text by a leading scholar on the subject.

In more serious vein, apparently the chap responsible for concocting the story about WMDs in Iraq is coming out and “telling all.”  Or just did, the other night, on national British TV.  Sort-of boggles the mind, really, but on the other hand I guess this kind of…crap…has been going on for ages.  Not much else to say, really.

Random historical news: Renaissance painter Caravaggio was murdered by the Knights of St. John, according to a new study by Professor Vincenzo Pacelli of the University of Naples.  Not everyone is buying the theory, but it’s pretty intriguing, and rests on some suggestive evidence.  A couple weeks ago, Michael White posted a rumination the origins of Parliament in The Guardian.  Rather a nifty summary, and I appreciated especially the way he emphasized how easily English political institutions could have developed differently.  Oh, and did you know that Handel wrote an opera on Richard the Lionheart?  Performed in 1727; apparently it has to be seen to be believed, and it WAS seen–front and center in the London Handel Festival. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to get the DVD any time soon…

The Clausewitz Chronicles: Part 1. Clausewitz and Medieval Warfare

I hadn’t meant to start my series  ”The Clausewitz Chronicles” with a post of this nature. Linear, progressing through the book, that was my thought.  But certain passages scattered throughout parts of the volume began to coalesce into a discrete topic, and the sprawling thoughts below are nearly a short article in length.

Clausewitz seems to be as popular today as he has ever been. Which is something, if you stop to think about it. After all, for a theorist’s work to be valued as highly as is Clausewitz’s, to be used as the basis of so many operational and professional platforms nearly two centuries after it was first written, is remarkable. Please note, I’m not referring, in the main, to historical studies that aim to read Clausewitz in terms of his contemporaries (which would be my approach should I ever have to teach a course on the subject). I’m referring to works such as Willmott and Barrett’s Clausewitz Reconsidered (2009), which asks if On War is still relevant to current military planning; to Sumida’s Decoding Clausewitz (2008), which values the text for treating of “important military questions,” and which has advocates a particular relationship between theory and history which has heretofore proved elusive.[1] I’m referring to van Creveldt’s article, decrying Clausewitz for discounting the “laws of war” in his lengthy discussion of war itself, and Howard’s  “Very Short Introduction,” which however does treat Clausewitz in a more historical vein. The Prussian theorist himself has come under fire more recently from CGSC professor and career soldier Stephen Melton, whose book The Clausewitz Delusion (2009) credits to a misguided affection for On War many of the U.S. military problems in Iraq and Afghanistan (not sure how much I buy that, though there are some points in favor of that thesis). Whether you love him or hate him, Clausewitz is not going away.

[Note: My edition of On War is the Everyman’s Library edition of the Howard/Paret/Brodie translation, and has a different pagination than the older editions]

As a military historian whose first area of specialization is medieval warfare, however, I have wondered at the applicability of On War to medieval warfare in particular, and to pre-Napoleonic conflicts in general.  Gillingham perhaps said it best, when, in concluding his analysis of Richard I’s generalship, he said that “[i]n these circumstances a Napoleonic or Clausewitzian Niederwerfungsstrategie made little sense.”[2] Of course, Gillingham prefaces this sentence with some remarks on the superiority of defense over offense in medieval warfare, which as we all know is a basic premise of Clausewitz’s study (VI:chapters 2  and 3).  Many would be quick to point out that this factor alone is a great example of Clausewit’z utility in analyzing past conflicts—Rogers, for example, invokes Clausewitz’s idea of the “positive aim” in his discussion of Vegetian warfare.[3] But a multiplicity of accurate observations does not justify a text’s use as a paradigm of evaluation.