|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 1, 2009 14:58:21 GMT -1
Oh dear Teg, are we doing 'sins of the fathers' now? :S nah, just being difficult
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 1, 2009 15:09:17 GMT -1
|
|
|
Post by megli on Jun 1, 2009 17:09:50 GMT -1
methinks you should have written this program That fucker Snow didn't ask! (Despite the fact he's sat on this very sofa getting me to witter about welsh history for Radio 4).
|
|
|
Post by clare on Jun 1, 2009 19:43:38 GMT -1
Goat skulls, a bowl of gizzards and "The darkness of paganism." Hmmmmmmm.
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 1, 2009 20:09:27 GMT -1
yeah, well... episode two is now on iPlayer (and episode 1 for another few days) Episode 1Episode 2speaking of Christianity, they've got one of my favourite films on there The Name Of The Rose
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 1, 2009 20:13:20 GMT -1
"Germanic tribes had invaded, driving out Christianity and what remained of Roman civilisation"
"they changed Britain from an illiterate, backward place, to a place of civilisation and learning"
bollocks.
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 1, 2009 20:47:31 GMT -1
btw, I'm not being anti-Irish, English, Scottish or martian. But you can't ignore the monastic stuff going on in Wales at the time. Of course, Snows family is from around Iona, so he thinks it is the center of the world, and goes out to make a program to prove it (conveniently not telling the whole story). Done ranting now
|
|
|
Post by Francis on Jun 2, 2009 7:22:05 GMT -1
Christianity with no bible is a contradiction in terms and always has been, even pre-Constantine. The huge corpus of writings left by the early fathers (e.g Origen, Irenaeus) and other very early Christian writings (e.g. 'the Shepherd of Hermas') show that Christianity was, and always has been, profoundly rooted ('fettered' as you put it) in literacy and the Bible. This was just as true in Britain as anywhere else. Hi Megli Thanks for the facts - I never want to be under any illusions! However I still disagree with your view that "Christianity with no bible is a contradiction in terms" I feel that in the homesteads, and round many hearths, people having heard the christian message preached would have taken that message and undeliberately merged it with what they knew. I'm not talking about centres of learning; Bangor, St. Davids or Clas style communities Beddgelert etc. I'm talking about the non-deliberate heresies of the common folk, merging the essence of the christian message with the context, history, geography and the natural world of their lives. As a child in a Catholic world I was christian. But mine was a heretical christianity that dismissed the bible, other than the gospels, as ludicrous and irrelevant - shortly after ruling out the possibility of Sion Corn. A relationship with Christ and acceptance of a christian message without the "bible" is without doubt feasible today, and to my mind feasible to the leity of any period. Individuals who's ideas would be seen as heretical to any established church but who have relationship with christ are still christian... I still suspect in the period we're talking about when communication and transmission of ideas was slower there'd have been many lay christians who had developed what little they'd heard into what the orthodox church (who's scribes recorded the church's "success" during that time) would have considered heresy. But obviously I accepted that to the church at that time in Wales books concerning the mythology of the Middle East, Jehovah and christ - whether they became canonical and incorporated into the bible or not - were essential to christianity. I just don't believe that to be the case for everyone working the land who might have considered themselves christian - even if their knowledge of chrittian doctrine would have offended the church!
|
|
|
Post by megli on Jun 2, 2009 7:56:49 GMT -1
"Germanic tribes had invaded, driving out Christianity and what remained of Roman civilisation" "they changed Britain from an illiterate, backward place, to a place of civilisation and learning" bollocks. The first one is broadly true. Small communities of Britons remained even in A-S territory (look at very old place names like Eccles: from British latin 'ecclesia', now welsh eglwys.) The second is also partly true: the pre Roman brits definitely couldn't write, but that doesn't make them backward.
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 2, 2009 8:24:51 GMT -1
the first one is too broad, it's a generalisation. It wasn't Britain (collective) it was the east and spreading out. But of course, the south-east is the center of the planet, even today the second: they're not talking about the pre-Roman Brits, they're talking about the post-Roman ones. In part1 he mentioned the Groans of the Britons, saying something sarcastic like "someone in Britain must have still been able to write because they sent a letter". See how it was spun? Of course they could write. We had a major ecclesiastical center at Caerleon, and all across the south. There were probably similar centers in other parts of Roman Britain, thinking about places like St Albans. Bishops from the Welsh churches attended Whitby, were they mentioned? Like the Scots/Irish, they resisted Rome and stormed off in a huff, and it took another what 100 years before the Welsh churches came under Rome? Correct me if I'm talking crap.
|
|
|
Post by megli on Jun 2, 2009 8:30:32 GMT -1
No, you're not, I'd misremembered. Gildas wrote rather good Latin, as it happens. I'm probably guilty of south-eastism too: born in Thanet (or Rhwyf, as I prefer to call it, resurrecting the Old Welsh name Ruim) and having lived most of my adult life in Oxford, wales still feels a very long way away, especially when I'm on the 3.30 back from Aber to Cambridge Mea maxima culpa!
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 2, 2009 9:08:54 GMT -1
not digging at you, but if you live outside the south-east you tend to notice just how south-east-centric the media is - especially on things like this that shouldn't be. Like the Olympics - brilliant, go Britain! except, if you live outside London, you get a different opinion
|
|
|
Post by Lee on Jun 2, 2009 14:57:29 GMT -1
there is a world outside the M25? i have memories... a palce in wales many years ago. nah, muct have dreamt it i blame the ticket barriers on the tube. they wipe your mind,
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jun 3, 2009 7:15:04 GMT -1
lol! I've lived there, I know what it does to your brain. generally though, there is an East/West divide in Britain, and there always has been. When the Romans came in, the Eastern half said "brilliant, we'll have some of that, pass the Toga", (Catactacus aside) and the West said "bugger off" and kept fighting it. The West never became totally Romanised, more, contained. Controlled. Governed. Life as usual, but we'll have the writing and stuff, thanks. Then, post-Rome, the Saxon culture came in, and again the East said "ah well, we'll be Saxon then" but the West, said "hang about, we're only just getting into this Roman thing, shove it". Point is, this "Welshness" thing wasn't invented by Iolo, its part of the character of the peoples of the West. We'll take Latin and Villas, just like we'll take English and motorcars, but we never totally convert. Is that ignorance, stubborness, dunno. This isn't even the forum for such discussion, just something that occured to me in the bath just now
|
|
|
Post by Adam on Jun 3, 2009 8:57:19 GMT -1
there is a world outside the M25? i have memories... a palce in wales many years ago. nah, muct have dreamt it i blame the ticket barriers on the tube. they wipe your mind, You do know that the M25 and associated motorways actually form a demonic sigil designed to immanentise the eschaton, don't you ;-)
|
|