Ask A Catholic

uh woah cadaver trial!

man the dark ages were wild and awesome. i think they get a bad rap, too.

i think you're prob right

"Pornocracy"!

is there another institution currently in existence that can date itself back 2000 years basically continuously?

man the dark ages were wild and awesome. i think they get a bad rap, too.

― goole, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 4:11 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah for real. there needs to be more movies about this era, or hbo series or something.

The Friars Club

xp

would kill for a GOOD miniseries about pre-renaissance rome, or the crusades, or the black death, or something

YES

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2010/02/fall-of-west-death-of-roman-superpower.html

cool bloggy book review of a recent history of the dark ages

i want to get some plague doktors on my tv

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_VI

YESSSSS

err x-post

theres something pretty amazing about maintaining a 2000-year contiguity, mostly that you end up with amazing shit like the cadaver synod

My god this is great:

Sergius III was a pope of the Roman Catholic Church 29 January 904 and 14 April 911. Because Sergius III was possibly the only pope known to have ordered the murder of another pope and the only pope to have fathered an illegitimate son who later became pope (John XI), his pontificate has been described as "dismal and disgraceful."[1]
Sergius was the son of Benedictus and came from a noble Roman family. His tenure was part of a period of feudal violence and disorder in central Italy, when the Papacy was a pawn of warring aristocratic factions, often led by prominent women.

The pontificate of Sergius III, according to Liutprand of Cremona, was remarkable for the rise of what papal historians saw as a "pornocracy", or "rule of the harlots", a reversal of the natural order as they saw it, according to Liber pontificalis and a later chronicler who was also biased against Sergius III. This "pornocracy" was an age with women in power: Theodora, whom Liutprand characterized as a "shameless whore... [who] exercised power on the Roman citizenry like a man" and her daughter Marozia, the mother of Pope John XI (931–935) and reputed to be the mistress of Sergius III, largely upon a remark by Liutprand

i think the crusades are already pretty 'late' to be talking about the dark ages

xtianisation of rome, battle of milvian bridge: 312
fall of rome: 476, traditionally
arrival of islam: 600s
great schism: 1054
first crusade: 1096

anything that happened between like 500 and 1000 is this weird blur

basically anything between the fall of rome and giotto i find pretty fascinating, on both sides of the schism. the byzantines/ottomans were pretty raw too!

you know what could use a sick multi-part HBO/BBC/canal+ miniseries is the history of venice

does "Pippin" count as a story about the early/mid Dark Ages?

in From Dawn to Decadence Jacques Barzun tried to rewrite our understanding of the Dark Ages – says the nomenclature is based on clichés. A fabulous book, by the way, if sketchy in places.

also, some of the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon kings seem pretty neat -- esp. Alfred the Great. Venerable Bede is also a favorite. as long as there's no King Arthur/Camelot shit tied in, i think that some sort of miniseries about British kings of that era could be well done.

yeah for real. there needs to be more movies about this era, or hbo series or something

saw this movie, it kicks ASS:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181791/

Seconding Alfred on the Barzun recommendation -- read most of it one long agonizing day stuck waiting in jury duty and it was one hell of the way to pass the time.

i really wanted to like Black Death - bean, warner, plague, how can u go wrong - but it failed to grip me tbh

one of the great things about the inferno is the volume of popes down there

this might be my favorite thing from the period

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars#Conversion_of_the_royalty_and_aristocracy_to_Judaism_and_relations_with_world_Jewry

http://www.khazaria.com/kuzari/excerpts.html

basic story is that a powerful king asks the philosophers, rabbis, priests and imams to pitch him on upgrading their shamanic tradition and he goes with turning his whole kingdom jewish

i really wanted to like Black Death - bean, warner, plague, how can u go wrong - but it failed to grip me tbh

man I loved it - the pacing, and the village, the righteousness of the speeches, the whole predictable-but-killer moral-equivalency stuff - adore that flick

note that hunting around for 'khazars' and judaism online can get you into some creepy nazi shit :/

xp did you guys like valhalla rising? i was really into it but haven't finished it

I really, really love the story of the Khazars, it's something else. Michael Chabon did a pretty good serialized story with that as the setting.

That kazars thing is REAL?? I thought it was made up as part of that stupid book with a women's version and a men's version?!?

+h, sorry.

just read Pope Joan which was a riff off the 'female pope' fable that was mentioned in the Marozia wiki entry: it was a decent read, though nothing mindblowing...

basically i am looking to watch fantasy TV series but set in irl

basically I want a Marozia biopic in the style of Caligula, and written by Gore Vidal, of course.

high hopes for this jeremy irons thing about the borgias, though obviously thats later than im talking

I think there is a character in Pope Joan called Marozia who is a courtesan for elite clients...

...but there's nothing as crazy as the pornocracy in that book!

i want a huge biopic on this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_the_apostate

Gore Vidal's novel is terrific, as is the Gibbon chapter devoted to him.

dear aero,
Could electroconvulsive therapy possibly help people get over religious upbringing, even if it's only temporary relief? And if so, can I buy a taser, write it off as a medical expense, and set up a mobile ECT/deprogramming practice?
thanks,

WmC, I can't speak to religious upbringing outside of the Catholic tradition. I would say just as a guy who's had a lot of therapy is that "getting over" is a concept best worth tabling. The way forward in my experience is seldom over or around but through. #wouldhavemadeagreatnewageguru

hmph, still wanna tase me some xtians

dear catholics

am I cool to love this awesome book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melmoth_the_Wanderer and still kiw you guys

sincerely

if it helps I am a notable Gerard Manley Hopkins stan

this isn't really a catholic question, but since we're here . . .

four days can be a long time, i guess, but i've never grasped the transition from jc's heralded and popular entry into jerusalem on palm sunday followed by jeering crowds calling for his death on good friday. is this a compression of a longer stretch of time that i missed? were friday's crowds hired goons rounded up by the pharisees?

on palm sunday night they went home tired and a bit sunburned and they laid down with their ugly spouses in front of their ugly children and looked at their loser lives and then they looked at jc and they said "I can't process it".

^^^

Lol and OTM

lotm

Opinion's about Andres Serrano's work notwithstanding, is there something funny about the destruction of Piss Christ by a sect whose whole graven images policy is a little bit off in the first place?