Conceptual Reframing

I think I leaped a big hurdle this morning in terms of how my sermon chapters will be structured. I’ve been wrestling with some related problems namely, 1) how do I treat Æ’s sermons as texts in their own right yet 2) honor their indebtedness to their sources without 3) perpetuating one of the views I want to avoid, that he and other early medieval preachers are just plagiarists. What I came to this morning is the realization of how the paradigms are functioning. We look at one of Æ’s sermons and see that he has heavily relied on Gregory the Great as a source. And therein lies the problem to my way of thinking… When we start considering Gregory as a “source” we are putting ourselves in an academic text-production paradigm. But that isn’t the most productive way to think about it at all.

The better way to think about it is one that finds Æ at home in his particular context. The question to begin is with is this one: When Æ sat down to produce an interpretation of biblical text X, how did he do it? What was his thought process? The answer is not that he reached for a source, rather, his mind went to his liturgical context and conditioning. When looking for a place to start, he’d head not to “Gregory” per se, but to “Paul”–Paul the Deacon–who had selected Gregory’s homily as the reading for the third Nocturn of the Night Office. The selection of Gregory is more a function of Æ’s liturgical context than the drive for a source. That is, Æ’s instinct was to go to the reading that had already liturgically interpreted the text and to use that as his main mode of entry into the text.

This isn’t necessarily a huge distinction but I do think it is an important one in terms of orientation and how we think through how the liturgical cycles influenced monastic authors. As a result, it also gives me a cleaner and clearer chapter shape so I can start by looking at Æ’s homily in its own right, then attend to the liturgical context which would include this kind of source material which almost invariably begins with the 3rd Nocturn homily (although he does sometimes supplement it from there–from other homiliaries) and also discuss how the liturgical texts of Mass and Office–hymns, collects, canticle antiphons, etc.–suggest or reinforce the interpretative tack he took.

Dissertation Work

Things have progressed to the point where I’ve been able to designate some brain cycles to dissertation work again. (I’ve had it–it *will* be finished by the end of the summer if it kills me. So far the odds are 50-50.)

Whereas before I started with more methodological stuff, I’ve dived into Æ’s sermons directly. What this has helped me see is that some of the stuff I pruned out before absolutely has to be put back into my re-formed chapters 2 and 3. Fr. Director thought that some of my work on patristic homilies was smoke-chasing; I’ve determined that it’s completely critical to the project.

Traditionally, early medieval homileticians have been accused of simple plagiarism. Indeed, Henri De Lubac’s only comment on Æ

is that he is a plagiarist of Gregory’s work. Rather, my work on the patristic material identifies not simply content but method and the purpose that derives from the method. What this let me do is to look at Æ’s sermons and to show that while, yes, he is recycling some content, he is using it in a very different way and with its own quite distinct method that throws light on what an early medieval preacher thought that he was creating.

My use of the Breviary has also been helpful. I now know I need to revisit some of my earlier liturgical work and look for some new evidence in different places.

On the Theology of the Daily Office

The Anglican Scotist wrote a few days ago and mentioned something about the theology of the Office. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. One of the things I keep returning to is how much structure matters. By “structure” I mean a variety of things. It includes but is not limited to 1) the order in which the elements appear (the most basic sense of the word ordo), 2) which elements are chosen when options are available, 3) how often do the elements/ordo change, 4) what prompts the elements/ordo to change.

I’ve been using the Anglican Breviary a lot recently but also found my Office Book which I had managed to loose on my desk. My experience of switching between the two has opened my eyes to the importance of noticing changes and what triggers them. Furthermore, the structure makes a definite theological impact in terms of what elements are not there–especially what elements are displaced or replaced.

There are a lot of options in the Daily Offices. Even if you are going strictly by vanilla 1979 BCP, the liturgy can have and express several different theologies based on how the required, optional, and possible elements are deployed…

Trial Liturgy: An Anglican Office of the Dead

(One of the reasons I transferred to WordPress is the ability to connect files to posts–this is a test of that functionality…)

Linked here are two files for an Anglican Office of the Dead. First, a Matins of the Dead; second, a Vespers of the Dead.

I have adapted the Roman form as found in the Anglican Breviary using the same kind of manipulations that were used to create our Morning Prayer form the combination of Matins and Lauds (there is no Prime version of the Office of the Dead) and Evening Prayer from Vespers (again–there is no Compline Office of the Dead). (For those unfamiliar with these Offices, see the article from the Catholic Encyclopedia.)

Following the traditional use, these may be read after the regular days Offices 1) on the first Friday of every month where we pray for all the departed, 2) on the day of death–or the day we are notified of someone’s death, 3) again on the day of burial, and 4) on the 3rd, 7th and 30th days after either death or burial. (While a double office is preferable you could, of course, read this instead of the usual offices…)

One of the reasons I post these files is because this disputed theological topic–praying for the dead–is part and parcel of the theological conundrum that the Lutheran Zephyr brought up: the invocation of the saints. I see them as inseperable because they are rooted in a shared Christian theology of death. I’ll write more on this a little later.

I welcome comments on the Offices.

Welcome to the New Digs

This is the new web home of haligweorc.

There will be a few more changes coming in the near future. All good as far as I know…

We did loose a post or two and a few comments but other than that, everything else seems to have made the change fairly well.

I’m hoping to have left some baggage behind at the old site. Much less will be written about the Great Unpleasantness; much more will be written about things spiritual and medieval. Hopefully much more will be written of and therefore on the Damn Dissertation. Time will tell…

Medieval Databases

No, silly, databases about medieval things…

There’s been some discussion about medievalist folks thinking about manuscript databases. I have a great deal of interest in the subject–but absolutely no time to do anything about it. If I may offer a few points of professional advice–since I am a database programmer in my day job:

  • Don’t choose a database because it happens to be the one on your computer. I.e., yes, you may well have MS Access on your computer if you’ve got the full Office Suite. No, don’t use it just because it’s there. Consider how you will use the database. Is it for merely personal use? Maybe Access will work for you. Do you want to put it on the web? Think about using MySQL instead. It integrates really well with a dynamic programming language called PHP. In fact, a whole lot of commercial websites are MySQL/PHP integrations. Limited project budget? You’re in luck–MySQL is free… (And so’s a good front-end for Windows here.)
  • Plan your database in advance. The biggest failing of most amateur databases is a lack of planning in the beginning stages. Think about you want to capture. Then, consider what fields make sense together in terms of tables, and what will tie those tables to one another.
  • A major issue that often comes back to haunt beginners is field normalization. In plain English, it means making sure that your data is in small enough bits. Thus, a shelfmark field shouldn’t contain “London, BL, Cotton Nero D IV” Rather, three different fields should have “London”, “British Library” and then “Cotton Nero D IV”. When in doubt, use multiple fields.
  • In terms of front-ends (that is, what a user will see as opposed to the back-end which is what the programmer interacts with) flashy is cool–but achieve stability first. Then go for cool. All the napkin drawing will be pointless if you can’t get your data out the way you want it…
  • Academics spend years learning dead languages and grappling with French poststructuralists, et al.; not all have invested the time in learning the technologies to disseminate what fruits they’ve gathered. When in doubt, talk with your IT department and their techies. Consider taking the money saved from buying a database and get a research assistant fluent in computer…

No, I haven’t been putting any thought into this recently. Why do you ask? Of course it had completely slipped my mind that Mediawiki works off a MySQL back-end… As does WordPress…

I’m going to stop talking now…