Jaike
Well-Known Member
- Aug 24, 2020
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I was teasing you there.
Actual facts of the matter are that the prime movers behind the investigation were Lutherans and Bathory was Reformed. It was not in their interest to uncritically pursue a Counterreformation agenda. The investigator was also a relative and an associate of Bathory. That alone makes it implausible that the accusations were entirely baseless. Then there is the mention of dozens of bodies that were discovered, although all we have now are mentions, not physical evidence.
Unfortunately, historical authorities are more than capable to produce bullshit themselves. I see the results of that almost on a daily basis, but I must say this entire subject is quite removed from my specialism. It is why one always has to treat outlier opinions with a dose of suspicion.
My attitude to any academic field is stick to the consensus view. For a non-expert, it is better to stay with the pack and be 'right' in an uninteresting way than to be wrong in an interesting way, because specialists are the ones who really know what the interesting ways are.
That the prosecution was a spectacle and was used as a political tool is a fact, but that does not mean that there were no murders. The quote does unambiguously not state that the prosecution was baseless according to Aleksandra Bartosiewicz , just that it was politicised.
I knew of that motif, but that is totally not a "sacred penance". I did think along the lines of flagellants, because that is the closest fit of what you described. I agree Phyllis and Aristotle is something different, but it does not really fit the description. I'm not a psychic after all.
I don't dispute that such illustrations may exist, but I stand by my statement if they are actual depictions of a mediaeval religious penance. Illuminations from that period were typically made by monks, so the underlying attitude was patriarchal and officially hostile to sexuality. That is not the place where you would expect erotic femdom drawings to originate. Something like a femdom sexuality probably always existed, but femdom as anything like the modern theme or genre is a serious anachronism.
That Wikipedia article is seriously slanted however, what's with uncritically describing Phyllis as a "dominatrix". That is not an objective description, it is an anachronistic act of reading what one wants to see into the drawings.
That is a non sequitur though. Whether religion is bullshit or not has no bearing on what the true motivations of a religious reason is. I think conservatism and socialism are bullshit, but it is pointless for me to posit what the 'true motivations' behind them are. The position that religion always stands in for something else is straight from the nineteenth century and the problem is that everyone claimed it stands for something that contradicts someone else. That is kind of like how all religions contradict each other.
It is also a dangerously unempirical approach, although that is in keeping with the nineteenth century.It is true that quite a few saints are entirely fictional - in that they never existed whereas I guess saints are supposed to be historical human beings, I'm not personally familiar with worship of saints by the way - and that some derive from pagan deities, but that was not the claim I contested. I contested that prioritising Mary was "some dim form of Goddess worship clad in Christian garbs". Maybe in some places a saint cult around Mary did incorporate traditions about pagan goddesses, but overall this happened to lesser known saints in 'frontier' areas. Besides placing an image from a new religion on an older religious site does not mean the new tradition is infused with goddess worship. In practice, the likely outcome is that only outward traditions remain while the religious beliefs and practices are converted to the new religion over the next generations. I'd say the mainstream views about Mary were shielded from such influences. However, folk religion does seem to prefer male-female pairings and that may be the mechanism behind the increasingly bigger role of Mary. But in that case the main driver would be heteronormativity, something that was present in all societies in ancient Europe.
Also, "Goddess worship" is a loaded term in history, it is often used for radical feminist speculations about a coherent tradition based around a matriarchal mother goddess. I have a healthy dose of respect for Gimbutas, but her views are on totally shaky grounds there. We just know very little about pre-Indo-European beliefs.
Whether Christmas originated from a Roman pagan holiday or not still seems to be hotly debated. Some elements are certainly or likely pagan, the word "yule" is a good example of something certain. For Easter, which is a lot older, the evidence does not really point in that direction. The supposedly 'pagan' spring elements can be explained far more parsimoniously by that holiday falling in spring. Anyway, there is a lot of bullshit out there on this topic, because folkloristics doesn't really have a critical method and prefers idle speculation. But I do agree with them that the main places where you would expect surviving traces from pagan traditions are in folk religion.
Can't fault me for being dommy in a femdom thread.
But while you made good points, I frankly do not think my points have collapsed and while I will happily admit to being a bratty bitch, I don't think I was too sure of myself here. The historical consensus view still seems to be that Bathory murdered dozens of young women. That you meant Aristotle and Phyllis was not something that could possibly be read from your description. Your original point about Mary representing a "dim form of Goddess worship" has shifted to a defence of pagan influence on later Christian traditions, plenty of which is debatable but which I would never dispute in its entirety.
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