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E-book Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages : Christianity and Traditional Culture in Central and Eastern Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

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Penilaian

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Let us retreat for a brief moment to the era that preceded the Late Middle Ages. In so doing, we might notice that some historians who have researched the Christianisation of Central and Eastern European societies as a continuous pro-cess, unfolding over centuries, estimate that pagan belief systems expired in the twelfth century, at the latest. The eminent Polish medievalist Henryk ?owmia?ski has asserted that the period in which the seeds of Christianity were first planted in the Slavic lands—a period that closed by the late twelfth century—was marked by: “the full Christianisation, in principle, of wealthy and powerful members of society, of knights, and of medieval burghers,” and that Christianity, “surely pen-etrated deep into the ranks of the peasantry” as well.1 These assertions are worthy of a certain scepticism, and the body of contravening evidence contains decisions made at Polish synods in the twelfth century regarding obligatory attendance at Sunday and holiday masses, decisions which by no means applied to the entire adult population, but rather only to the representatives of small settlements. Quite clearly, synod decision makers were aware of conditions that prevented the broader population from participating in religious worship, conditions which were, it would seem, not significantly better in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Of course, the very notion of “full Christianisation”, a rather unfortunate term used to describe what in fact was a never-ending process, can and should be the subject of debate.I raise the issue of how we might evaluate the state of Christianisation in Central and Eastern Europe in the High Middle Ages because it provides a starting point for observations in later centuries, through to the end of the Middle Ages, when, as is often argued, the “processes of Christianisation every-where ran deeper and broader, in the sense that they reached the widest extent of the rural population.”2 Doubtlessly this is a statement that contains some serious arguments, but it is also one that emphasises the extent to which the Christian religion, in this period, succeeded in taking root in local soils over the extent to which it failed.At the same time, there is no shortage of scholars who express scepticism in this regard, who highlight the conspicuous superficiality of the Christianisation of societies in this region at the end of the Middle Ages, and who also turn their at-tention to Bohemia, in broad civilizational terms, before the Hussite Revolution. According to the famous Czech historian Františk Šmahel, Christianisation in the fourteenth century, during the rule of Charles IV of the Luxembourg dynasty, encompassed Bohemian lands in their entirety, though it was met almost every-where in Bohemia (outside of the social and religious elites, of course) by reli-gious knowledge that was, generally speaking, crude and faint, and by resistance from within traditional agrarian culture.3 At this point, it would be appropriate to point out that other areas of Central and Eastern European, areas that remained behind the Bohemians, were also marked by this condition.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

230 BYL r

Penerbit

Switzerland : Peter Lang International Academic Publishers., 2019

Deskripsi Fisik

176 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783653068702

Klasifikasi

230

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Christianity

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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