Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Error 665.9: Monastic Rules not Found

Well, here goes the Religion 209 final I should have done awhile ago -_-

Now, by looking at that title, you might be thinking, "Did you just go all Dragonball Z on us?" Yes, I just did. But for a good reason. Now when you think of the Middle Ages (excluding all Middle Ages scholars), what do you think of? Is it

  1. Someone going "all medieval" on you?
  2. Old people 
  3. If its not the 1990s, therefore it must suck
  4. All of the above
  5. None of the above
  6. Some of the above
Well I'm here to say that all of you are, to steal a line from Dr. Perry Cox, "wrong wrong wrong wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong! You're wrong!" In fact, the Middle Ages in Europe did not suck (for the most part). So, in dealing with the Middle Ages, we must first delve into the perspective of the masses. In other words, the people of Middle Ages Europe who worshipped the Christian faith.

During the Middle Ages, the spread of Christianity was in full swing. With the spread in Christianity there was an established gap between the papacy and the people. While the papacy's clergymen read the word of the Bible to the masses, an illiterate public was unable to fully understand the meanings behind the sermons. To that end, these people created different fraternities for them to understand the Bible for their own personal lives instead of relying on the often misunderstood clergy.

One of the more notable orders established was that of the Franciscans. Created by the controversial Francis of Assisi in 1221, his order was comprised of those who wished to be humble, poor, simplistic, and dedicated to the faith. The Franciscan order maintained humility, and also founded its own branch of female monks, which became the Beguins. (from Medieval Popular Religion) The Franciscans and later the Dominicans attempted to eliminate the class structure that had been established within the papacy and had been extended to monasteries around Europe.

The different monasteries were attempting to escape the human element of hypocrisy. In other words, orders such as the Benedictine and the Cluniacs (unrelated to the actor) had founders who established rules to end the cyclical corruption within the church, and in theory their rules would work. Those orders strayed away from common medieval societies and eliminated all differences, including sex/gender, class, social rank, and employment to create a uniform flow of dedicated monks. The concept of uniformity in all aspects sounds familiar...hmmmm. Nope. doesn't sound familiar at all. However, like most things in life, something that  in theory sounds perfect won't always end up perfect. That was the case with the Cluniacs and the Benedictines. The monks who were indoctrinated into these orders didn't follow the rules of their order to the nth degree, and the corruption of these "holy" orders extended into the secular world as well.

Over the course of 100 or more years, the papacy entered deals with the leaders of the Holy Roman Empire. In exchange for the support of the kings of the HRE, the papacy was allowed influence within the secular world. The papacy went so far as to decide on what days battles between warring nation-states should be fought.

Enough with the information, let's get on to something exciting!

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