Books, Boobs, and a Church with Two Swords
I met a new friend last night. What a guy! His name is Peter.
I suppose when I realized that he too was a university professor, I felt a sense of kin. But it was what he professed that rang the chords of progressive things within me.
And of course, it didn’t hurt that he was a fair and handsome man, slim, and not tall!
I suppose, in some way, that was partly the reason for which he was in trouble.
As a teacher, he was recognized as a genius. He had his own flock of students that doted over him, in some ways, worshiped him. And one in particular. Damn! She was smart. And damn! She was beautiful. And in time, Peter was fondling her boobs more than her books.
He was a teacher of religious things . . . at a major cathedral . . . in the time when universities were inventing themselves. But even though he professed religious things, he was not a priest, and had not covenanted the three sacred vows. And horror of horrors, he got her pregnant.
His tenure as a professor was stripped. His testicles castrated. His instrument of manliness severed. And banished he was. And so was she.
But their soul-mate love continued, with their expression of their love for each other in letter after letter after letter.
Yes, Peter Abelard (1079 – 1142) and his love for Heloise was a personal tragedy. And they can teach us of what soul-mate love can be, can do, and can endure.
But Peter Abelard suffered an even greater tragedy. And for this, I am so glad to have met him. To realize what he in fact did. At least tried to do. And to realize that institutionalized hate can be more powerful than love.
Nearly 800 years before, the great Father of the Church, Augustine, persuaded the saints to let the Jews endure. “Don’t kill them all.” Don’t kill them all off for killing Christ. For in Augustine’s ambivalence, the Jews were needed to sustain the hate, to validate the nefarious claim that it was the “Jews” that killed the Christ. As long as Jews remained in existence, the validity of the Church was verified and the hate personified.
But after eight centuries, and by now two Crusades with their murderous rampages against Jews later, the genius Peter Abelard was promoting another theology.
In his “Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian,” he puts these words in the mouth of the Jew:
“To believe that the fortitude of the Jews in suffering would be unrewarded was to declare that God was cruel. No nation has ever suffered so much for God. Dispersed among all nations, without king or secular ruler, the Jews are oppressed with heavy taxes as if they had to repurchase their very lives every day. To mistreat the Jews is considered a deed pleasing to God. Such imprisonment as is endured by the Jews can be conceived by the Christians only as a sign of God’s utter wrath. The life of the Jews is in the hands of their worst enemies. Even in their sleep they are plagued by nightmares. Heaven is their only place of refuge. If they want to travel to the nearest town, they have to buy protection with high sums of money form the Christian rulers who actually wish for their death so that they can confiscate their possessions. The Jews cannot own land or vineyards because there is nobody to vouch for their safekeeping. Thus, all that is left them as a means of livelihood is the business of moneylending, and this in turn brings the hatred of Christians upon them.” (McCallum, “Abelard’s Christian Theology, page 20)
Even though Peter himself had been schooled by another great figure in the generation before him, Saint Anselm, (a monk, and a bishop, a philosopher and a theologian), Peter somehow just could not make himself swallow the dogma of the day that God was the ultimate feudal lord.
A feudal lord lording over an “economy of salvation” that requires, as a kind of debt payment, the savage death, however freely chosen, of a beloved son. In the earlier times, like in the time of Origen 10 centuries before, that debt ransom payment was a payoff to Satan. With Anselm, it was now to payoff God! And whether the sacrificed son did so voluntarily or not, it put Jews in one precarious position. For Jesus death was now seen as freely chosen by Jesus himself . . . and yet the Jews still had to be blamed for murdering him . . . and when Jews are blamed for the event that now makes Christian salvation possible . . . a new and frightening layer was added to old Augustine’s doctrine of “ambivalence toward Jews.”
And so my new friend Peter preached a message of love and tolerance. Of exemplar over expiation.
But his nemesis was Bernard of Clairvaux, the first Christian theoretician of the holy war and it was Bernard that provided theological justification for the killing of unbelievers. To Bernard, Peter, and his nonsense of love and tolerance to unbelievers (i.e. the Jews), be damned.
It was Bernard who advanced the “pernicious theory” that God has given to the Church two swords. “Both swords, that is, the spiritual and the material, belong to the Church: however, the latter is to be drawn for the Church and the former by the Church. The spiritual sword should be drawn by the hand of the priest; the material sword by the hand of the knight, but clearly at the bidding of the priest and at the command of the emperor … Now, take the sword which has been entrusted to you [the pope] to strike with, and for their salvation wound if not everyone, if not even many, at least whomever you can. (Berrnard of Clairvaux, “Five Books on Consideration,” bk 5, ch 7,118.)
Constantine had changed history, and the very meaning of Jesus Christ, by turning his cross into a sword.
And Peter, my new friend Peter, with his message of tolerance for unbelievers was summarily banished.
My friend Peter, who firmly believed that Jesus of Nazareth came to show us how to live . . . not to die in submission to the brutal power of the Father. “We are made more righteous by Christ’s death than we were before, because of the example Christ set us, kindling in us by his grace and generosity a zeal to imitate him.” (Quoted by Evans, “St. Bernard,” 155)
My new friend Peter, who preached a message that the death of Christ is exemplary, as Peter insists, and not expiatory.
My new friend Peter, who tried his best to steer a Church from what would become a two-sworded monster in the impending Inquisition.
Peter. I am so glad that I met you last night.
The Refectory Manager
(I met Peter in Chapter 29 of James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews.”)
I suppose when I realized that he too was a university professor, I felt a sense of kin. But it was what he professed that rang the chords of progressive things within me.
And of course, it didn’t hurt that he was a fair and handsome man, slim, and not tall!
I suppose, in some way, that was partly the reason for which he was in trouble.
As a teacher, he was recognized as a genius. He had his own flock of students that doted over him, in some ways, worshiped him. And one in particular. Damn! She was smart. And damn! She was beautiful. And in time, Peter was fondling her boobs more than her books.
He was a teacher of religious things . . . at a major cathedral . . . in the time when universities were inventing themselves. But even though he professed religious things, he was not a priest, and had not covenanted the three sacred vows. And horror of horrors, he got her pregnant.
His tenure as a professor was stripped. His testicles castrated. His instrument of manliness severed. And banished he was. And so was she.
But their soul-mate love continued, with their expression of their love for each other in letter after letter after letter.
Yes, Peter Abelard (1079 – 1142) and his love for Heloise was a personal tragedy. And they can teach us of what soul-mate love can be, can do, and can endure.
But Peter Abelard suffered an even greater tragedy. And for this, I am so glad to have met him. To realize what he in fact did. At least tried to do. And to realize that institutionalized hate can be more powerful than love.
Nearly 800 years before, the great Father of the Church, Augustine, persuaded the saints to let the Jews endure. “Don’t kill them all.” Don’t kill them all off for killing Christ. For in Augustine’s ambivalence, the Jews were needed to sustain the hate, to validate the nefarious claim that it was the “Jews” that killed the Christ. As long as Jews remained in existence, the validity of the Church was verified and the hate personified.
But after eight centuries, and by now two Crusades with their murderous rampages against Jews later, the genius Peter Abelard was promoting another theology.
In his “Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian,” he puts these words in the mouth of the Jew:
“To believe that the fortitude of the Jews in suffering would be unrewarded was to declare that God was cruel. No nation has ever suffered so much for God. Dispersed among all nations, without king or secular ruler, the Jews are oppressed with heavy taxes as if they had to repurchase their very lives every day. To mistreat the Jews is considered a deed pleasing to God. Such imprisonment as is endured by the Jews can be conceived by the Christians only as a sign of God’s utter wrath. The life of the Jews is in the hands of their worst enemies. Even in their sleep they are plagued by nightmares. Heaven is their only place of refuge. If they want to travel to the nearest town, they have to buy protection with high sums of money form the Christian rulers who actually wish for their death so that they can confiscate their possessions. The Jews cannot own land or vineyards because there is nobody to vouch for their safekeeping. Thus, all that is left them as a means of livelihood is the business of moneylending, and this in turn brings the hatred of Christians upon them.” (McCallum, “Abelard’s Christian Theology, page 20)
Even though Peter himself had been schooled by another great figure in the generation before him, Saint Anselm, (a monk, and a bishop, a philosopher and a theologian), Peter somehow just could not make himself swallow the dogma of the day that God was the ultimate feudal lord.
A feudal lord lording over an “economy of salvation” that requires, as a kind of debt payment, the savage death, however freely chosen, of a beloved son. In the earlier times, like in the time of Origen 10 centuries before, that debt ransom payment was a payoff to Satan. With Anselm, it was now to payoff God! And whether the sacrificed son did so voluntarily or not, it put Jews in one precarious position. For Jesus death was now seen as freely chosen by Jesus himself . . . and yet the Jews still had to be blamed for murdering him . . . and when Jews are blamed for the event that now makes Christian salvation possible . . . a new and frightening layer was added to old Augustine’s doctrine of “ambivalence toward Jews.”
And so my new friend Peter preached a message of love and tolerance. Of exemplar over expiation.
But his nemesis was Bernard of Clairvaux, the first Christian theoretician of the holy war and it was Bernard that provided theological justification for the killing of unbelievers. To Bernard, Peter, and his nonsense of love and tolerance to unbelievers (i.e. the Jews), be damned.
It was Bernard who advanced the “pernicious theory” that God has given to the Church two swords. “Both swords, that is, the spiritual and the material, belong to the Church: however, the latter is to be drawn for the Church and the former by the Church. The spiritual sword should be drawn by the hand of the priest; the material sword by the hand of the knight, but clearly at the bidding of the priest and at the command of the emperor … Now, take the sword which has been entrusted to you [the pope] to strike with, and for their salvation wound if not everyone, if not even many, at least whomever you can. (Berrnard of Clairvaux, “Five Books on Consideration,” bk 5, ch 7,118.)
Constantine had changed history, and the very meaning of Jesus Christ, by turning his cross into a sword.
And Peter, my new friend Peter, with his message of tolerance for unbelievers was summarily banished.
My friend Peter, who firmly believed that Jesus of Nazareth came to show us how to live . . . not to die in submission to the brutal power of the Father. “We are made more righteous by Christ’s death than we were before, because of the example Christ set us, kindling in us by his grace and generosity a zeal to imitate him.” (Quoted by Evans, “St. Bernard,” 155)
My new friend Peter, who preached a message that the death of Christ is exemplary, as Peter insists, and not expiatory.
My new friend Peter, who tried his best to steer a Church from what would become a two-sworded monster in the impending Inquisition.
Peter. I am so glad that I met you last night.
The Refectory Manager
(I met Peter in Chapter 29 of James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews.”)
posted by The Refectory Manager | 8:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home