Magistra et Mater

In response to: "Interfaith dialogue for six year olds" 2 days old
by menhir [Member]

Children are full of cerebral and physical vitality. It is not easy to assess an individual child's total cognitive ability, perceptions and so on. As a mum you will have a fair idea of what works. I like your approach to our pluralistic society and its faiths.

When sprog was about 3 years old sprog noticed a little Downs girl in th more…

In response to: "Bloglite" 4 days old
by Gesta [Visitor]

Best of luck with the book, Magistra! more…

In response to: "Interfaith dialogue for six year olds" 5 days old
by dr ngo [Visitor]

My experience echos ChrisC's, largely. When I abandoned the church/faith my parents prayed for me, and after some awkward moments, we tried to avoid all related topics when we got together. But I (an avowed atheist) remained a loving and loved son of fundamentalist parents for many decades before their deaths. (45+ years later in the case of my more…

In response to: "Five year olds and gay marriage" 5 days old
by ChrisC [Visitor]

Hilarious ! But I agree with your final paragraph.

Let's hope the subject of the Sudanese gentleman who was recently married to a goat does not come up for a (long) while ! more…

In response to: "Interfaith dialogue for six year olds" 5 days old
by ChrisC [Visitor]

You said : "If my relationship with her is tightly bound up with my factual claim that Christianity is true, then if she rejects that claim, it is difficult for her to do so without rejecting me as well."

I disagree with that; it is not my experience.

I also was brought up in a 'Christian' household where questioning of more…

In response to: "Interfaith dialogue for six year olds" 5 days old
by Bavardess [Visitor]

It sounds like you are doing a great job - it can't be easy to explain something so complex and rich in language a six-year old can understand. I was raised in a very fire-and-brimstone Protestant household where you either conformed to the system or you were wrong, and that was very damaging to my relationship with my parents when I came to reject more…

In response to: "Louis the Pious’ parenting problems" 6 days old
by dissertation [Member]

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!
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Dissertation Help more…

In response to: "Bloglite" 16 days old
by menhir [Member]

Work well and wishing you a brilliant outcome.

I pleased Eric Hobsbawm is in your list of mentions, I think I still have a book of his floating about the domestic bookshelves. more…

In response to: "Bloglite" 17 days old
by Another Damned Medievalist [Visitor]

sad, yet it will give me time to catch up! good luck with the book! more…

In response to: "Medieval attitudes and mental exercises" 21 days old
by GazTHFC [Member]

I think the understanding and thinking of the medieval period along with the dark ages is perhaps the fastest moving and opion changing area of history.
I will perhaps have to return and reread this again and dig out some books at home.(just trying to remember the historical division between dark ages and medieval not that I really subscribe more…

In response to: "Louis the Pious’ parenting problems" 21 days old
by GazTHFC [Member]

Interesting and Poor Loius is one them characters that can provide plenty more interesting material to read on. more…

In response to: "Bloglite" 21 days old
by Bavardess [Visitor]

I like Hilary Mantel as a writer (though I haven't read Wolf Hall yet), but it is annoying in that Guardian piece that she sets up a sort of false opposition between historical novelists and historians. Especially since she seems to have only a rudimentary grasp of how history is practised these days. I hope all goes well with your manuscript. more…

In response to: "Can we believe Gregory of Tours about Obama?" 23 days old
by Balbulus [Visitor]

Einhard may have been propagandist, like all those writing in the early middle ages, but he was certainly not a 'standard historian' He knew that he was doing something original, he tells us so, and he did not think he was writing history. more…

In response to: "Louis the Pious’ parenting problems" 33 days old
by Cullen Chandler [Visitor]

Just a small thing:

Louis had to re-divide the empire in the 820s because a new son was born. Sure, he maybe could have expected the elder three to be displeased, but what else could he have done? And then he used re-re-dividing as a way to punish his sons for the rebellions they already had undertaken as the end result of earlier de more…

In response to: "Louis the Pious’ parenting problems" 35 days old
by technomist [Member]

Interesting piece. more…

In response to: "Can we believe Gregory of Tours about Obama?" 38 days old
by menhir [Member]

These discussions are wonderful; I view them as a member of an audience,in this instance an audience that will reflect lack of in-depth subject knowledge but, I do have some intellect to work out what is nonsensical. On the other hand, I also fear that there are others who will not use intellect, at whatever level, to assess the evidence, however more…

In response to: "Can we believe Gregory of Tours about Obama?" 44 days old
by Jonathan Jarrett [Visitor]

I think Gregory and Liutprand compare pretty well, though I've always figured Notker as more moralising, telling worthy stories to the young monks. The oddest thing about Notker is his number of comedy bishops, really. Of course, Gregory kind of has comedy barbarians. I don't know any of these authors as well as I should, of course, and the histori more…

In response to: "Can we believe Gregory of Tours about Obama?" 44 days old
by magistra [Member]

The issue of audience is certainly an important one, but I’m not sure it’s entirely about class/education. I think what we’re seeing increasingly in the US is what are sometimes called information bubbles, or what I’d call closed systems: people addressing an audience of ‘believers’ who don’t really hear dissenting voices. It’s not really propagand more…

In response to: "Can we believe Gregory of Tours about Obama?" 45 days old
by Jonathan Jarrett [Visitor]

There was something else I meant to work that into, which is an extension of the argument. There is a gap in the range of audiences, I think, between Birthers and the people who believe in death panels, and the audience of Gregory of Tours. Whatever else you may think of Martínez's analysis of the text, I thought his argument that the text is for a more…

In response to: "Can we believe Gregory of Tours about Obama?" 46 days old
by Jonathan Jarrett [Visitor]

This is interesting, as ever, and comes just at the right time for something I'm writing for eventual blogging too, so thankyou for that. As to the question, I don't claim to have an answer but I suppose that we have to think about audience. I agree with you that the audience is too often used as a kind of truth-governor and that it's very hard to more…

In response to: "Carolingian lordly women" 47 days old
by Bavardess [Visitor]

Magistra - it was actually the Caster Semenya story that was in the back of my mind when I was reading this post. It's an interesting question as to how much medical views of biological sex influenced the beliefs of the wider population (and also how far they reinforced or conflicted with theological ideas about gender and sex difference). For the more…

In response to: "Can we believe Gregory of Tours about Obama?" 47 days old
by Bavardess [Visitor]

Excellent post. You make a great point about the problmes involved in reading sources like Gregory as evidence for social history (especially in the early medieval period, where sources of all kinds are thin on the ground). more…

In response to: "Carolingian lordly women" 47 days old
by magistra [Member]

Thanks for all your comments: a few brief and belated replies.

Bavardess - Kim is citing the work of Joan Cadden on medical views of sexual difference in the central Middle Ages. Unfortunately Cadden only starts from the C11 with Constantine the African and the Salerno school, and I don't think that anyone's looked at what medical text more…

In response to: "Why I no longer read historical fiction" 48 days old
by Michael Tinkler [Visitor]

That's a funny reversal, given successful historical novelists like Steven Sailor who are ABDs and much better reading than most teaching scholars! I am a working art historian/historian who longs to write Dhuoda's Book, the Novel - or maybe Galla! the Miniseries. Just ask Another Damned Medievalist - I've been talking about bo more…

In response to: "Birkbeck 2: what is masculinity?" 50 days old
by lindon [Visitor]

Im genderqueer, my experience of my masculine side and feminine side are quite different. When my masculine side is in control i feel more idea orientated, i begin to notice buildings and structures more, my masculine persona is not concerned with domination its more about independence, emotions are not processed as much by my masculine side. My fe more…

In response to: "Carolingian lordly women" 53 days old
by Interloper [Visitor]

Forgive an ignorant interloper into the field....but a) while the percentages are low, we do have examples in the very early period of lordly women, not many grant, but they did exist and b) there's a rather significant set of events in the 11th and 12th centuries that rather opened up society a bit to "lordly women": the Crusades. With the Lord o more…

In response to: "Carolingian lordly women" 56 days old
by Aquablanca [Visitor]

I'm not sure about the Carolingian end of this, but during the period 1000-1200-ish (sometimes later) the relevant offices could be inherited. I suspect that it is not coincidental that at the same time we find female advocates and, obviously, lots of countesses. Indeed, in the 13th century we even encounter the odd female sheriff in England (cf. L more…

In response to: "Carolingian lordly women" 57 days old
by Bavardess [Visitor]

I’m glad to hear Kim LoPrete is looking more closely at the relevance of the public/private model of power. It seems to me the concept of a division between ‘private’ and ‘public’ power is not that useful for this time period, when the lord’s household was also the centre of their political power (although in England, that was of course starting to more…

In response to: "Medieval attitudes and mental exercises" 58 days old
by magistra [Member]

This is where I may meet the limits of the comprehensible/sayable on both medieval and modern belief, but I’ll give it a go. But firstly, I ought to recommend Susan Reynolds, ‘Social mentalities and the case of medieval scepticism’. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th series, 1 (1991): 21-41, which I have just more…

In response to: "Medieval attitudes and mental exercises" 60 days old
by magistra [Member]

Some more responses - whether I'll ever catch up, I'm not clear.

dr ngo – I think the concept of being ‘captain of my fate’ is one that has always been available to the privileged in society. Paulinus of Aquileia in the 790s was complaining about the ‘lovers of this world’ who said:

Let me do what I want and c more…