Friday, December 08, 2017
Insatiables vs Deplorables from the start
An interesting bit of history from the Lea book on the Inquisition that I was citing earlier. This part isn't emphasized in conventional wisdom nowadays.
Before the Inquisition ran wild and expanded into an all-consuming pogrom of Deplorables, it began as an academic fight between Rome and one specific heresy. Why was Rome so concerned with this one heresy? Because Rome, then as now, was filthy rich and massively corrupt; and because Rome, then as now, felt the need to rape logic by retrofitting its peculiar evils into the Bible.
Rome insisted that Jesus and the disciples were rich, thus requiring the successors of Jesus to be rich.
The heretics (including the Franciscans and my old friend Billy Ockham) insisted that Jesus and the disciples were poor, which is pretty fucking clear** from the written record. Ockham continued fighting for sola scriptura and rationality, and wasn't imprisoned or burned. (The barbecue grills didn't run at full speed until the next century.)
This issue served as the theoretical springboard for larger questions of state vs church, especially in France. Luther and Hus were picking up the rational side of this same dispute.
In other words, Rome invented the Prosperity Gospel.
= = = = =
**The later apostles included some influential and rich men. It's fair to say that Christianity wouldn't have taken root without the money and status of men like Luke and Paul, but that doesn't affect JC himself. Scripture clearly depicts his family as middle-class artisans of low status.
Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter
¶ 11:31 PM
