In episode 8 we've got the Medieval version of "Hair!" (or "Hey, Man - Got Any Bread?")
Hi and welcome to Episode 8 of the Hansel and Gretel Code
🎶 Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 20 in A major, D. 959 - I. Allegro 🎶
today we’re back in the religion section of the library and, as promised, we’re just about ready to close the book on apostolic poverty and the first sentence of our fairy tale...
and before we get going, I want to remind you that 2 episodes ago I had announced I was close to figuring out that pesky mailing-list business so that I could send you a copy of the manuscript version of the fairytale...
well, I gave up on getting Feedblitz to work for me...
for now, I’ve come up with another simpler, solution: at the end of today’s episode I’ll tell you about it and how you can get my copy of the fairytale manuscript so that you can follow along and know what’s coming...
okay, that said, let’s have another listen to that first sentence of our fairytale manuscript:
[01:08]
Once upon a time, there was a poor woodcutter who lived before a great forest.
because of that simple word “poor” we discovered a whole host of our woodcutter’s ancestors, and we’ve added the most interesting names and personalities among them to our woodcutter’s family album...
and since we’ve been able to trace his lineage all the way back to John the Baptist and beyond, it’s taken us quite a few episodes to fit them all in...
now, before we move on to the second sentence of Hansel and Gretel, we’re going to introduce just a few more of our woodcutters poorer relations — including the two mendicant mega-stars of voluntary, apostolic poverty: Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone and Domingo de Guzmán — otherwise known as St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1286) and St. Dominic (1170-1221)...
***
Mendicants
[02:10]
oddly enough, it’s a little hard to say here, which came first — the avalanche of various mendicant groups or San Francesco and Santo Domingo...
and it really is a question of the chicken or the egg...
their personal charisma greatly contributed to that wild explosion of mendicants, and yet the number of mendicants was already growing before they even arrived on the scene...
In fact, Peter Waldo (1140-1218) (who we met in Episode 7) preceded these 2 saints in history, and so technically, he’s the first medieval mendicant with celebrity status...
except — his ideas and followers (the Waldensians - otherwise known as the Poor Men of Lyon) were declared heretical...
and so the convention is to speak of the Franciscans and Dominicans as the "real" mendicants...
and just to remind you, all these groups of monks and nuns and laypeople who chose to live in poverty — just like the apostles — were called mendicants because medicare means to beg, and begging for alms is not only how they made their living, it’s what distinguished them from all other groups of hard-working monks we met in Episode 7...
groups like the Benedictines, the Carthusians and the Cistercians...
Unfortunately, as simple, humble and sincere as most mendicants may have been, the effect that their exploding numbers began having was not all positive...
There being an obvious philosophical and economic divide between merchants and mendicants, you can easily imagine how that would have played out, since you can only stretch Christian Charity so far...
given that some clerical orders worked hard for a living, while others hardly worked — that ever-increasing number of empty hands being held out palm up eventually began to grate on hard working peasants...
in fact this practice of begging and dressing like an apostle just naturally became as great a source of suspicion concerning ALL mendicants and their motives as simony was for the more orthodox groups of monks...
As I’ve said, alongside the Franciscans and Dominicans there was an utter confusion and profusion of groups popping up like mushrooms...
Not only were they all united by the voluntary observance of poverty (and the need to beg) they were also united to a greater or lesser extent by defiance of Vatican authority...
Many of the groups smugly considered themselves above Canon law and the Vatican by virtue of the, um, virtue of their poverty...
Actually, many of them, were, indeed, quite humble and sincere — even in their disobedience — yet as far as the Vatican was concerned, disobedience was akin to heresy...
and while heretics may be sincere, they're still heretics, goddammit...!
Hell, even the Franciscans and Dominicans initially teetered on the edge of heresy and outright disobedience to the pope...
ultimately though, they pretty much got with the program, and were successfully absorbed within the Church...
other groups, not so much...
***
San Francesco
[06:00]
Before we get to those outliers and outlaws, let’s take a closer look at the in-laws: 2 celebrity mendicants who flirted with, but missed out on the woodcutter family merit badge of heresy...
the most famous of all being Francis of Assisi, who died in 1226...
Francesco is arguably the most famous of all our woodcutter’s Italian ancestors...
not only is he the namesake of probably one third the male population of Italy — just like George Washington, he could easily be called the, um, Padre of his Country since, even today, there are plaques on numerous Italian churches proudly proclaiming: “St. Francis slept here.”
The basic facts about Francesco are that he rebelled against his own family's wealth, chose a life of Apostolic Poverty, attracted a huge following, and gave those followers a set of strict rules...
Rule #4 being the most basic:
I firmly command all the brothers by no means to receive coin or money....
Rule #6, which was meant to close any and all loopholes in Rule #4 said:
The brothers should appropriate neither house, nor place, nor anything for themselves...
it was also slightly confusing, if not outright contradictory, since it included the command:
...(the brothers) should go confidently after alms....
Now, just like our woodcutter, Francesco was famous for his humility, and certainly seems to have been someone following the voice of his own heart...
Oddly enough though, his followers, in following him, found themselves confused and divided...
It turns out, following Francesco's charisma was one thing, following his rules was something else entirely...
***
Bicker, bicker, bicker
[08:18]
There was, in fact, an interminable squabble between those who wanted to follow Francesco’s rules to the letter, and those who preferred the spirit of them...
And so historically, we have one group variously known as the zealots / zelanti / spirituali Franciscans, and another more laid back and worldly group known as relaxanti / conventuali / cappuccini Franciscans...
Why is this important?
well, aside from the confusing nomenclature involved, it meant that various popes had to intervene and rule on this business of Francesco’s rules — and not just to settle the constant squabbles regarding how much poverty was enough and how much poverty was too much...
no, the Vatican had to constantly do damage control, since anything it OFFICIALLY said about poverty and property reflected directly on its OWN massive wealth and CashFlow...
defending a strict policy of poverty opened it up to accusations of hypocrisy, which COULD and eventually DID undermine its considerable moral power and authority...
and so we have a succession of popes playing ping-pong with each other, each of them writing Papal Bulls that flip-flopped between the more liberal definitions of voluntary poverty and the stricter, more conservative definitions...
for example, in 1279, Pope Nicholas III confirmed poverty as “meritorious and holy...”
and then, after decades more of squabbles, papal ping-pong, and a hell of a lot of Canon Law hair-splitting, an exasperated Pope John XXII attempted to solve the problem of apostolic poverty once and for all by declaring (in 1323): the very idea that Christ and his apostles had no possessions whatsoever was: "erroneous and heretical."
Case closed...!
***
Little Brothers
[10:36]
well, this may have settled the matter for everyone who believed in the letter of Canon Law...
it didn’t convince a certain group of Franciscan hardliners who refused to give up their, um, poverty mentality...
and these particular poverty loving zealots became known as the Fraticelli — meaning “Little Brothers”
and just let me remind you once again, that the original title of our fairytale was not Hansel and Gretel — it was The Little Brother and the Little Sister...
now I gotta say, I had hoped to sort through all of the names of the various Franciscan groups in a straightforward and logical manner and so come to understand this poverty business once and for all...
Hey, I was an altar boy and I grew up in a parish that was run by Franciscan Cappuccini — what we called the Capuchins...
how tough could it be to figure this stuff out...?
well, turns out, it was a nightmare...
🎶 Schubert Piano Sonata no. 19 in C minor, D. 958 - I. Allegro 🎶
[11:39]
the contradictory nomenclature alone confused the hell out of me...
forget about all the various and conflicting degrees of adherence to the letter or the spirit of Francesco’s original rules...
and, if it was confusing to me, just imagine how much more problematic and confusing it was for Christians in the Middle Ages...
there were so many independent mendicant group start-ups, EVERYONE had to be dead sure about the orthodoxy of whichever one of them they chose to follow and support, regardless of what that group might choose to call itself...
and that’s because, along with the profusion of names and philosophies of the various mendicant factions and fractions, there was yet ANOTHER name everyone needed to worry about: "Heretic."
[12:38] [3 Women Screaming!]
see, it turns out that every single mendicant in every group could be called a fratello, a fraticello or even a fratricello...
Catholicism was, and still is meant to be something of a family affair with each member being connected to "holy mother, the church..."
Unfortunately, having to wonder if that holy mother considered the group you gave alms to was among it's beloved offspring or one of its bad seeds well, that meant: not only was your Salvation at stake — but so too was your life and liberty.
[13:23] [“uh-oh!”]
***
Santo Domingo
[13:24]
well, before we get carried away into the sensational business of Inquisitional flames — which we are bound to do on this journey — we have to at least mention that other medieval mendicant mega-star: Domingo de Guzmán and his followers, the Dominicans...
I have to admit that Santo Domingo / St. Dominic — who died in 1221 — is not of the strictest importance to our story, except he was apparently a true ascetic zealot, and his order is the one most closely associated with the inquisition...
and while it’s even possible that he’s NOT an ancestor of our woodcutter, that doesn’t actually eliminate him from the family album...
if you think about it, his connection to the inquisition tends to put him more in line with our woodcutter’s wife...
🎶 Spanish Inquisition blast 🎶
[14:22]
Well, let’s just leave Domingo in a comfy chair for now and climb out onto a limb of the outer-most branches of apostolic poverty...
["fetch the comfy chair...!" / "the comfy chair...?"]
[14:34]
***
Nut Gathering
[14:46]
and that’s where we find a genuine poverty nut whose schtick has been imitated by all sorts of wackadoodles, er, I mean well meaning religious zealots ever since — especially wherever there are crowds...
Gherardo Segarelli, who, despite being born in 1240 — 14 years after the death of Saint Francis — was utterly enthralled by the ghost of Francesco’s charisma and desperately sought admission to the local Franciscan brotherhood...
We can see that Gherardo was going to be twenty years old when Gioacchino da Fiore’s New Age was supposed to arrive...
Sure enough, around 1260, he sold everything he owned, walked out into the middle of the marketplace in Parma, and literally scattered all of his cash...
and then like a semi-crazed Gioachimite or a medieval Diogenes, he began wandering about the streets repeating his famously imitated catchphrase (Penitençagite! / Penitentiam agite!), essentially meaning Repent (for the end is near)...!
According to Salimbene de Adam, the somewhat snooty medieval chronicler — Gherardo was considered an imbecile by the townsfolk, and as for the local Franciscans (which included Salimbene himself), well, they wanted no part of this guy...
even so, being rejected by his hero’s followers didn’t stop Gherardo from becoming a true mendicant, begging for bread in the name of Christ, and preaching salvation...
turns out, his enthusiastic (and somewhat eccentric) approach to poverty and spirituality even attracted a group of ardent followers who became known as the Apostolic Brethren or Apostolici. or — according to the piously annoyed Salimbene:
qui se dicunt Apostolos esse et non sunt….!
the apostles who aren’t apostles...!
given that Gherardo’s preaching was awfully similar to that of San Francesco, the fact that he never became a true Franciscan is the only real thing that separated him and his followers from all other Franciscan zealots...
although that persnickety fact: that he and his followers never received papal approbation was one hell of a problematic technicality...
***
Tecnicalities
[17:32]
you see, as part of that papal ping-pong match to settle the constant squabbling about apostolic poverty, (as well as keep the competition for alms from getting so far out of hand that even the Vatican itself might start to suffer) in 1274, at the behest of Pope Gregory X, the Second Council of Lyon declared that all new mendicant groups must obtain approbation by the Vatican or else...
and, oh yeah, you know these guys meant business, because this is the same ecumenical council that declared in no uncertain terms that not only would the church not tolerate bigamy among its monks... under no circumstance would a monk or bishop be allowed to bequeath the ongoing income from the church or churches in his purview to any of his offspring...!
[damn!]
anyway, without becoming an official franchise of the Catholic Church, Gherardo and his followers ran the distinct risk of being hauled before the Inquisition...
🎶 Spanish Inquisition blast 🎶
[18:47]
which, indeed he was...
not once, but a bunch of times...
at his first trial, the Inquisition decided he was pretty much a harmless, eccentric visionary and let him off with a warning: no more preaching...!
since he continued to preach, attract followers, and otherwise disobey the Vatican, they eventually threw him into prison...
he did, however, manage to escape and then continued to preach and attract followers...
so, how do we know that he was a true ancestor of our woodcutter...?
[I dunno (giggle)]
[19:27]
- his insistence on living in poverty like an apostle...?
- his flirtations with the woodcutter family merit badge of heresy...?
Well, despite being considered the village idiot of Parma, Gherardo was quite a remarkable character...
and as we’ll see, his more progressive ideas are going to show up as a woodcutter family trait once we get deeper into the gingerbread forest...
for now, we just need to know that his ideas on chastity link him to those Free Spirit groups I hinted at in Episode 7 — the true Medieval Hippies...
***
Medieval Hippies
[20:12]
according to the transcripts of Gherardo’s final inquisitional trial, he not only sanctioned sex between unmarried men and women, he sanctioned gay and lesbian sex as well...
[20:26]
[“We’re just friends”]
justification for this — which was elaborated by one of his more famous and erudite followers, Fra Dolcino — came out of the New Testament...
specifically, Paul’s Epistle to Titus: 15:
All is pure to the pure, but to the defiled, and to those who do not believe, nothing is pure because both their mind and their conscience are defiled.
Unfortunately, after one time too many before the Inquisition, the inquisitors voted THEIR mind and THEIR conscience, and poor Gherardo was burned at the stake on July 18, 1300
[ “what to say...?”]
[21:12]
Gherardo’s unpleasant demise prefigures that of his most famous follower’s:
[ “who’s that?”]
[21:23]
...two people who definitely belong in our woodcutter’s family album: the aforementioned Fra Dolcino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Dolcino 1250-1307 and his consort, Margherita Boninsegna da Arco (otherwise known as Margaret of Trent)
Dolcino was a well-educated follower of Gherardo whose ideas were recorded in letters to his followers, very much in the manner of St. Paul's Epistles...
despite the historical accuracy of what we might call Dolcino’s medieval MailChimp accounts, the tragic history of this real-life pair of Hansel and Gretels is complicated by a confusion of surviving documents that make it difficult to be spot on about ALL of the facts — some of which are considered too sensational to be anything but apocryphal...
Historically accurate or not, the factoids we have were more than likely well-known to our author — and extremely likely to be held as factual in the Grimm’s Zeitgeist...
the picture they paint is of an extraordinarily progressive and broad-minded couple whose somewhat libertarian and socialist ideology not only gives us greater insight into the character of our woodcutter and his family, it matches the basic philosophy of our author and our author’s circle...
To wit: Dolcino and Margherita advocated — and literally fought for: the fall of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and a return of the Church to its original apostolic ideals of humility and poverty...
of course, that’s no surprise, since so many of our woodcutter’s medieval ancestors were Gioachimites...
(which as you remember from Episode 7 meant being a follower — or even just an admirer — of Gioacchino da Fiore, the Calabrian monk who predicted a New Age of the Holy Ghost: a future age which would be a paradise on Earth with no need for bishops or cardinals or popes)
[“roger that”]
[23:39]
🎶 Schubert Piano Sonata no. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 - II. Andante sostenuto 🎶
[23:40]
then there’s the recurring theme of a return to that old time religion — which actually has an academic name: restorationism...
although it’s pretty clear that our woodcutter’s ancestors had little interest in talking about religion like a bunch of professors or hair-splitting theologians...
they only cared — and cared deeply — about living it...
obviously there’s nothing new or even remarkable in this...
we already know that while the whole question of mendicants and their ideals was an enormous pain in the ass for various popes, some mendicant groups like the Franciscans and Dominicans were given official Vatican approval to go around begging and living out their dreams of apostolic poverty and that old time religion all in relative peace...
what really got popes up the tree — and doomed the Dolcini — was something we haven’t run into before...
see, you’d figure these poor beggars would have their hands full praying for their daily bread and patiently waiting around for divine intervention and Christian Charity to see them through to Gioacchino’s New Age...
instead, these Dolcini, were led by 2 people with an intellect, a social conscience, and little patience for waiting on some flakey, pie-in-the-sky New Age...
and so their movement was not only spiritual, it was political...
🎶 Schubert - Rosamunde, Op. 26 Overture (The Magic Harp, D.644) 🎶
[25:12]
***
Politics as usual
They boldly (and dangerously) advocated for the fall of the feudal system and for human freedom from any and all entrenched power...
Even MORE dangerously, they advocated for the creation of a new egalitarian society — one based on mutual aid and respect...
and what they actually meant was a society in which all property would be held in common, AND — horror of all horrors — a society that respected gender equality.
[audience gasp!]
[25:51]
Of course, they were declared heretics, and in 1307, in the wake of a holy crusade sent to destroy their movement and eradicate their ideas, they were gruesomely executed.
🎶 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 12 in A Flat Major, Op. 26 - III. Marcia funebre sulla morte d'un eroe 🎶
[26:04]Â
According to reports, they so pissed off the pope and the local nobility, after their capture they were tortured, castrated, dismembered and burned...
“Yikes...!”
[26:18]
now this business of sending out a holy crusade is of special interest to our story, and not only because this one was similar to all other holy crusades with theological aims, namely the domestic, European ones sent to wipe out heretics like the Waldensians and the Cathars, as well as those other, more famous Eastern ones sent to wipe out Islam...
given the radical political aims of the Dolcini, this crusade had much more of a political agenda than a spiritual one...
it was undertaken at the behest of pope Clement V (5 June 1305 - 20 April 1314) — the pope who famously terminated the Knights Templar (allowing the King of France, Philip IV, to wipe THEM out, along with their legendary wealth, and uh, the IOUs for the ginormous sums of money they had lent him over the years)...
maybe not so famously this is the same pope who sent another, STRICTLY political crusade to kick the Venetians out of Ferrara...
the details of which are preserved in his own extensive records — and those details include the various forms of booty available to crusaders, one of which was the distinctly un-christian promise that any Venetian captured by a crusader could be sold into slavery...
[“What...?”]
[27:46]
we’ll have more to say about the political powers of the papacy as we get deeper into our fairytale forest...
for now, let me just add that Clement V — a Frenchman — was the first denizen of the so-called Avignon papacy: a 67 year period during which successive popes lived in France instead of Rome —
["ooh la la...!"]
[28:09]
— and is otherwise known as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church...
and oh yeah, our guy, Fra Dolcino — just like Pierre Waldo — was another intellectual who enjoyed referring to the pope as the Scarlet Whore of Babylon...
just sayin’
***
Got any Bread, Man...?
[28:32]
dear old Clement V (who died in 1314) had another bug up his a**, er I mean bee in his bonnet about a group that was so widespread and diverse, it was impossible to target and crush with a nice, handy holy crusade...
we’re talking here about a group of groups each one of which represents a different branch of our woodcutter’s family tree — and let me tell you, there were lots of them, and they were all about as alike as apples and oranges and bananas and potatoes...
Clement, who was totally confused by them all, not to mention totally annoyed by their cheeky refusal to obey his rules, could only think to lump them all together under the catchy name of Beghards and Beguines and call them all heretics...
[3 women scream]
[29:25]
Beghards and Beguines were a diverse group of lay people who chose to live together in houses or communities and obey the spirit of apostolic poverty...
many of them were, indeed mendicant, having to beg for their daily bread, while others had patrons, and some very definitely worked for a living...
the problem here is that not all of them fit the definitions of heresy...
many of them were perfectly orthodox and obedient to the pope...
hell, the Beguines, especially, being all women, even had the enthusiastic approval of orthodox monks like the Dominicans, who took many of them them under their wings, giving them spiritual advice and hearing their confessions...
unfortunately for those obedient, orthodox groups, a slightly different offshoot of the woodcutter family tree: the Brethren of the Free Spirit — otherwise known as the Damnatio Fratrum de Libero Spiritu — was springing up, and spreading everywhere...
kinda like brambles...
and its members, well, they were kinda like uh, rabbits, um, multiplying in those brambles...
in fact, wherever there were beghards and beguines, there were also free spirits...
and even if some of the begirds and beguines had a reputation for being conceited, sanctimonious prudes, there was so much mixing and matching among them that before you knew it, even the people who knew which was which started getting them confused...
one major source of that confusion was a catchy little phrase used by nearly every mendicant in Germany — orthodox and otherwise...
the phrase itself was Brott durch Gott! and it literally means Bread by way of God...
obviously implying that anybody handing over a coin or a crust of bread was acting for / by / or even (as the free spirits would have it) as God...
what’s funny about it is that we have it on record that this was the first and only foreign language phrase taught to the earliest Italian Franciscans sent to Germany...
what’s not so funny is that with so many of these mendicants pouring into towns and attracting followers, the locals — who had no such love of poverty and only so much Christian Charity to spare — must have gotten sick and tired of hearing “Brot durch Gott” all day long and from every street corner...
over the years numerous authorities, including at least one Holy Roman Emperor — Charles IV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_IV,_Holy_Roman_Emperor — and various popes and bishops all decreed that not only was anyone who shouted “Brott durch Gott” to be considered a heretic...
[3 women scream]
[32:29]
...but so too, anyone who gave them alms...!
now there are quite a few reasons why even the threat of excommunication, heresy and a potential summons before the inquisition did little if nothing to keep the Free Spirits from attracting followers...
one of which was something we came across before in Episode 7...
that was when we spoke of Amaury de Bène, and his followers, the Amalricians...
Amaury was the Frenchman who was forced to recant his own ideas which were declared by the 4th Lateran Council to be “not so much heretical as insane!”
one of those ideas being: “he who remains in love of God can commit no sin.”
not only did this mean that salvation was pretty much guaranteed, regardless of your, um activities, but here again was yet another movement whose tenets cut the legs out out from under simony and eliminated any need for the middlemen of the Vatican...
a free spirit paraphrase of this (which came to us through a number of Vatican middlemen, including Albertus Magnus — the great teacher, doctor of the church and alchemist) was:
...quod fit sub cingulo a bonis non sit peccatum.
...whatever is done by the good — below the belt — is not a sin.
[“I like that!”]
[34:06]
this, of course, must have sounded awfully good to fun loving Germans... especially those who have always taken their Carnival time seriously...
in fact, the very hotbed of the Free Spirit movement was the German city of Cologne (whose citizens, to this day, party harder and longer during Karnival than anyone else on the planet... hell, to them, Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday is just an afterthought to an entire Karnival season lasting months and months)
Well, Clement may or may not have been a party animal in private, in public, he was certainly a party pooper...
[crowd booing + boo! (couple of people)]
[34:50]
in decree # 28 of the Council of Vienne Clement writes:
We have...heard with great displeasure that an abominable sect of wicked men, commonly called Beghards, and of faithless women, commonly called Beguines, has sprung up in the realm of Germany. (It) holds and asserts in its sacrilegious and perverse doctrine the following errors:
I’m not going to go through the list of errors...
he cited 8 of them, and they pretty much define the basic ideals of the free spirits, not those of the more orthodox Beghards and Beguines...
of course, what really bugged him was the fact that the free spirits were groups of people who chose to ignore the dogmatic rules of the Church and live their own spirituality...
as far as the Vatican could tell, they were nothing but willful, spiritual imbeciles — disobedient as hell, and bad seeds “planted by the sower of evil deeds...”
...procurante satore malorum operum damnabiliter insurrexit...
as far as many townsfolk could tell, THEY were living the life, and making it all up as they went along...
and yes, of course, there had to be a good number of freeloaders and party animals who were, indeed, just along for the ride — Â
[“fer sure...!”]
[36:18]
— yet a great number of these free spirits were every bit as humble and sincere as our woodcutter, and like him, were quite strictly and bravely following that still small voice of the heart... Â
[“interesting”]
[36:34]
***
Mirror, Mirror
and speaking of sincerity and bravery — here’s the last poor ancestor we’re going to highlight before we move on to the second sentence of our fairytale: Marguerite Porete, a mendicant free spirit who may or may not have been a Beguine...
Marguerite, um, begs inclusion in our woodcutter’s family album because it was understood that Clement V took his list of 8 errors from a book she had written...
although it wasn’t until 1946, that she was actually understood to be the author of the book in question: The Mirror of Simple Souls...Â
see, it was on record that Marguerite had written some book in French that had been condemned and burned around 5 to 15 years before Pope Clement came up with his naughty 8 list...
it was also on record that Marguerite had been warned, in no uncertain terms, that she would suffer the same fate as her book if she didn’t shut the, er, refrain from repeating those filthy heretical things she had written in her book...
of course, her book survived the book burning — as books generally do — and she continued to distribute copies and spread the word until she was eventually brought before the inquisition in Paris...
her steadfast refusal to recant her ideas — over the course of a year and a half in prison — led the inquisition to make good on that original threat, and she was burnt at the stake on June 1st 1310...
[awww]
[38:22]
right there in front of the HĂ´tel de Ville in Paris
[“that’s correct”]
[37:58]
over the next 6 centuries, Marguerite was pretty much forgotten, mostly because nobody had formally connected her to the Mirror of Simple Souls...
see, the book was still around, although everyone thought the author wanted to remain anonymous... and throughout the Middle Ages, it enjoyed enough popularity — even among orthodox contemplative monks — that it was translated from the French into Latin and Middle English... from Latin into Italian, and then again from Middle English back into Latin...
That book really got around...
the form it takes is a dialogue mostly between Love, Reason and the Soul, and pretty much amounts to a manifesto of the Free Spirit movement...
(from Chapter 21)
“And who are you, Love? says Reason.”
“I am God, says Love, for Love is God, and God is Love, and this Soul is God through its condition of Love, and I am God through my divine nature....”
 [a confused “what...???”]
[39:46]
what was understood from this and 140 short chapters of questions and answers was that: when the Soul is full of God's Love it is united with God... and THEREFORE: cannot sin...
[ “oh... good!”]
[40:05]
orthodox or not, this is something of a paraphrase of 1 John 3:6
Whoever abides in Him does not sin.
of course this no sin part was something that got Amaury de Bène in trouble... and it’s what gave inquisitors a real hard-o*... er, bone to pick with Free Spirits...
the other part — the union with God business— is that same recurring theme of Unio Mystica...
just know this won’t be the last time we run into it because it’s an important theme that the story’s metaphors will keep emphasizing over and over... and, as we already know, it’s a metaphoric idea that our fairytale eventually ends with...
for now, just keep that in the back of your mind... and as we continue our journey through the fairytale forest you’ll be able to judge for yourself if our author actually meant for us to make that connection... or if I’m just full of sh*, um, magic beans...
[“you’re scaring me”]
[41:12]
now, being able to read the Mirror, knowing that Marguerite was its author, gives us tremendous insight into her character, and identifies her as an honest-to-God ancestor of our woodcutter...
in it, she herself tells us she couldn’t help but try to put her mystic experience into words, if only for the sake of teaching her readers or listeners how to achieve the ecstatic state of Unio Mystica that she herself had longed for and finally experienced... and that’s precisely what enticed others to the free spirit movement — not just that license to be licentious part...
these people were hungry for their own experience of Unio Mystica... and, unlike the hard-ass inquisitors, they were eager to listen to and trust someone who had actually achieved it...
I think we too can trust that she did... I mean, we not only have her word for it, it was also reported by an ecclesiastic chronicler, that at the time of her execution, her demeanor was so brave, pious and sincere, plenty of the onlookers were moved to tears...
[awww]
[42:34]
***
Once upon a time
fortunately, this particular branch of the woodcutter’s family tree didn’t die out with Marguerite... although it did change... from simple poverty lovers, our woodcutter’s ancestors blossomed into something that had only been hinted at within their growing number: mysticism...
and we will, indeed run into a full flowering of mystics, all along the path in our gingerbread forest...
for now, let’s just listen to the first 2 sentences of our fairytale... since we’re going to working on that second sentence in our very next episode: Episode 9...
[43:16]
Es war einmal ein armer Holzhacker, der wohnte vor einem großen Wald. Es ging ihm gar jämmerlich, daß er kaum seine Frau, und seine zwei Kinder ernähren konnte.
Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter who lived before a great forest. Â He had it so rough he could barely feed his wife and two children.
so, whether or not you’d consider yourself a free spirit, I’m gonna give you another teensy-tiny taste of what Marguerite wrote in Chapter 96 of the Mirror that almost literally identifies her as one of our woodcutter’s ancestors (and I admit to paraphrasing here, but only slightly): [44:05]
Once upon a time — (I swear she actually says this — in French, of course)
[ooh la la][44:11]
Once upon a timethere was a poor creature who begged, and for a long time sought God... and finding nothing, remained as she was, hungering for that which she sought...
🎶 Schubert - Six Musical Moments, D. 780 - III. Allegro moderato in F minor 🎶
[44:28]
well...
thanks for listening...
I hope you’re enjoying the story so far... Episode 9 should be coming out fairly soon...
all I know for certain is that it won’t take us 8 episodes to deal with that second sentence... more like 2, I think...
in the meantime, remember that you can find transcripts for each episode on the website: betweenthelines.xyz — betweenthelines is all one word...
and, oh yeah... as I mentioned at the start of this episode: a while ago I had announced that I was close to figuring out that pesky mailing-list business so that I could send you a copy of the manuscript version of the fairytale...
well, after giving it my best shot, I became utterly frustrated with the coding involved... it was just taking up way too much of my time to get it straight...
so for now if you’ll just go to the website and send me an email requesting the pdf of the manuscript, I’ll send it to you and put you on my mailing list... just hit the link that says: “
easy peasy...
alrighty, then... ciao a tutti...!
ciao, ciao [46:16]
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Music and Sound Credits:
*German Fairytale Reading by JĂĽrgen Lexow*
Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 20 in A major, D. 959 - I. Allegro performed by Paul Pitman and courtesy of musopen.org
Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 19 in C minor, D. 958 - I. Allegro performed by Paul Pitman and courtesy of musopen.org
Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 - II. Andante sostenuto performed by Paul Pitman and courtesy of musopen.org
Schubert - Rosamunde, Op. 26 Overture (The Magic Harp, D.644) performed by Das Orchester Tsumugi and courtesy of musopen.org
Beethoven - Piano  Sonata No. 12 in A Flat Major, Op. 26 - III. Marcia funebre sulla morte d'un eroe performed by Paul Pitman and courtesy of musopen.org
Schubert: Six Musical Moments, D. 780 - III. Allegro moderato in F minor performed by Sofja Gülbadamova - licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 - and courtesy of musopen.org
“Damn!” courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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"I don't know..." courtesy of nfrae and freesound.org
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“We’re just friends” courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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“what to say…?” courtesy of Roses1401 and freesound.org
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"who’s that?" courtesy of iccleste and freesound.org
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"roger that" courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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"audience gasp" courtesy of FreqMan and freesound.org
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"Yikes!" courtesy of jorickhoofd and freesound.org
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”what...? (guy)” courtesy of balloOOnhead and freesound.org
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“ooh la la” courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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3 women scream  courtesy of thanvannispen and freesound.org
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“I like that!” courtesy of FreqMan and freesound.org
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“crowd booing” courtesy of tim.kahn
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"boo!" (couple of people) courtesy of jayfrosting and freesound.org
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“fer sure” courtesy of Iceofdoom and freesound.org
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"interesting..." courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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"awww" courtesy of vahdena and freesound.org
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"that's correct" courtesy of bogenseeberg and freesound.org
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“a confused what...?? (girl)" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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“oh, good” courtesy of Iceofdoom and freesound.org
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“you’re scaring me” courtesy of vanceparley and freesound.org
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"ciao, ciao" courtesy of Nighteller and freesound.org
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