74x12
Well-Known Member
The question is would slavery ever end without Christianity? The answer is probably not.
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Why has "Heathen" become such an ugly word?
- Thread starter Spiderman
- Start date
Which god's law would that be?
amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
Of course in reality, her suffering certainly wasn't for any good reason. She blamed it on the her own pride in wearing necklaces. It would be like me blaming my dental issues on trying to keep a well kept beard, or paula white blaming the marine kingdom for american politcal problems. This medieval women represents a thousand years of misassociation between physical and metaphysical sympathy. It's time to turn the page, right? Using what, more christianity?
She said she took pleasure in it, and I take her seriously. Her experience represents just a small sample of the self-debasing attitude that bede describes as gaining elevation with the christian english. I am astonished as I read how his characters resign themselves from 'worldly things' in nascent english christianity, and can't help but think he's describing a radical revolution in attitudes toward life, regarding the way that at least some people seemed to have lived per bede's implication. His emphasis seems to be a retreat from the world, from the consideration that anything is physically important, and that is mistake that cost our civilization centuries of better living. Our lives are clearly better, only because someone decided that 'worldly things' were worth looking into again.. not to say that monk-like retreats into the forest are ok periodically
Well, maybe and maybe not. I had read some norse mythology, and I'm not really certain that valhalla was the only hall in heaven where the dead went, there seemed to have been more halls as well. It isn't clear if this sect of northmen were thinking that way, for in ibn fadlan's account, the sacrificed women seems to describe wanting to reach a garden paradise of some kind. I guess my point though, is that she is similarly resigned to fate just like the christian women was, do you agree? It is that resignation that is the issue, that is what modern people try to resist. In looking to heaven and not science, the christian woman seems just as much a sacrifice as the pagan one
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LASTINGLIGHT
Member
And also which god would that happen to be. There are so many of them.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Doubtful, since god did permit slavery and established laws to regulate it. And, of course, Christians were vehemently opposed to ending slavery, with those such as the Confederate States of America believing slavery to be the god-ordained natural state of black people, and insisting it is their god-given right to own slaves. And, even in Europe Christians were taking other Christians as slaves. It's been a long established tradition Christians throughout Christendom, and as well as the Islamic world, much for the same reasons.
Augustus
…
Somewhat similar to the way medieval Christians are demonised now as the cause of all evil via simplistic and misleading historical myths.
It wasn't Christians who invented this to make them "look like the devil", it was a product of 19th C artistic license and the Romantic tradition. The main source of its popularisation was costumes in Wagner's Ring cycle.
Medieval Christians did not depict them with horned helms.
The idea that women were significantly more emancipated in pre-Christian society is somewhat misleading. In the move to Christianity women probably lost out in some areas and gained in others. In neither were they in a particularly emancipated state though.
Women could play an important role in political and military affairs in the Christian world:
Iron Ladies of the Ancient World - Mavia of Arabia - Archaeology Magazine Archive
Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians
Eleanor of Aquitaine - Wikipedia
Abbesses could play significant roles in religious and social affairs, for example:
Hildegard of Bingen - Wikipedia
Hilda of Whitby - Wikipedia
As with Pagan society, women also could conduct business, own property, etc.
There were some positive developments too. For example, generally, in European Pagan society, unmarried and married women were literally the property of men and had no consent over their own bodies (although could perhaps gains osme autonomy as widows). So the idea that women were 'subservient to men' was hardly a Christian regression from a more enlightened Paganism.
If salient features of the pagan legacy persisted throughout the millennium of the Germanic-nordic continuum, it is nonetheless true that Christianity introduced radical changes into women's lives. The new religion's most original contribution to the feminine condition was the insertion of gender equality into marriage and sexual relations. This program would obviously benefit most the gender that had suffered discrimination.
Churchmen were unable and indeed did not wish -to interfere in all areas where women were treated unequally, but in matrimonial matters they sought to establish gender symmetry. Most successful was their program concerning consent. In Roman law the father had exercised decisive authority over the marriages of both his sons and daughters; according to Germanic custom the men themselves chose their wives. Familiar with both systems, churchmen preferred the Germanic approach but sought to extend the marital choice to women as well.
Consent in marriage meant little to Germanic and nordic men who already enjoyed this privilege, but, if and when implemented, it was an extraordinary change for women. The silent pagan bride, transferred like property from father to husband, was replaced by the articulate Christian woman who · by her own "yes-word" (jayroi) was allowed to affirm her willingness to share her life with a man who already had consulted her, not just her father.
Fathers of daughters may have appreciated this new female freedom, but it was not necessarily received with favor by the groom or his kinsmen, who were more preoccupied with the economic and political advantages offered by the bride and her family than with personal relations. One may further speculate that affective marriages -that is, marriages containing mutual marital affection -were encouraged when a woman had given her consent.
The doctrine of consent was introduced to the north through ecclesiastical correspondence between Norwegian and Icelandic prelates beginning in the late twelfth century, in which the Archbishop of Nioar6ss (Trondheim) brought the new legislation to the attention of his suffragans...
Gender equality is also evident in the stipulation that men and women were to be punished equally for sexual crimes other than illegitimacy. Gragas had defined unlawful intercourse (legoro) as the crime committed by a man when he slept with a woman over whom he had no sexual rights. In contrast, Bishop A.rni's law distinguished fornication (einfaldr h6rd6mr; literally, single adultery) from adultery (tvifaldr hordomr; literally, double adultery), and applied them to both men and women according to their marital status (NgL 5:39). Without using the term, the so-called Older Christian Borgarthing Law had already conceived of single adultery and had ordered both a married man and a married woman to pay a fine of three marks if they slept with an unmarried partner (NgL 1:351).
The principle of gender equality may derive from churchmen's underlying concern for humans as individuals. In the pagan culture only the man was accounted an individual who took responsibility not merely for his own actions but also for those of his wife and daughters. When a pagan woman committed a crime, her husband had to answer in court, as Gunnarr did for Hallgerdr after she ordered her slave to steal food. A pagan woman was not considered capable of committing sexual crimes but was regarded as damaged property.
Women in Old Norse society - Jenny Jochens
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Augustus
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Ignoring any moral discussion on what is desirable a religion normatively believes towards slavery, in reality Christianity placed significant restrictions on slavery that did not previously exist in pre-Christian Europe.
At least prior to the discovery of the New World and the immense amounts of money to be made, Christianity did lead to a massive decline in slavery within Europe, particularly within Western Europe where it was pretty much eradicated. This trend begins in the Roman Empire post-Christianisation.
Of course many of these countries did later engage in the transatlantic slave trade on a massive scale though.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
And yet they still owned human beings as property. And does it really matter how they went about owning humans? Lots of Christians defend the Bible's slavery with whatever reason, trying to dodge the harsh reality their "holy" book allows slavery, one of the most sadistic and cruel policies ever made.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
When did I claim they did?
A few examples doesn't excuse "a woman shall not usurp authority over a man" and blaming her for everything because "she was deceived." And, don't forget, some such as Joan of Arc were killed. Pain relief for birthing was frowned upon because woman are supposed to suffer during child birth, because the Bible says so. And, overall, largely, generally, and mostly women were relegated to less than men and being subservient to men. Because it's what the Bible says. And those ideas still linger today.
For example:
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not give false testimony," "You shall not covet," [TR adds "You shall not give false testimony,"] and whatever other commandments there are, are all summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love doesn't harm a neighbor. Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.
Romans 13:8-10
In other words,
Euro Christian people opposed enslaving other Euro Christian people.
But everybody else was fair game?
That's the way it looks to me. Christians are fine with ugly oppression, as long as it isn't Christian folks.
Tom
The Abrahamic religions are unique in that they basically set themselves up in opposition to all other viewpoints and demand that their followers reject them, as well.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Why would a pro-slavery religion deserve credit for ending slavery? Have you even read the bible?
74x12
Well-Known Member
Overly simplistic and short sighted view of things. Basically ignoring history. Modern western society doesn't even realize how much it owes to Christianity.
Augustus
…
Was pointing out it has no history in the Christian tradition, but was a product of 19th C artists.
Pointing out that a few women had status in pagan society doesn't change that they were subservient then too.
Like most of these historical "big bad Christianity" claims, it's a myth made up by agenda driven 19th C anti-Christian polemicists.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that nineteenth-century physicians—not clergy—drove opposition to anesthesia in child- birth and that their objections centered on medical and not religious grounds, the contrary view persists. Why have such false conclusions continued?
A central reason lies in the ongoing and unwarranted use of two nineteenth-century polemics as scholarly authorities: John William Draper’s History of the Conflict be- tween Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christen- dom (1896). Both authors repeated the claim that the use of anes- thesia in labor was discouraged not so much for physiological as for biblical reasons and the fear of impiety.
Bertrand Russell picked up the refrain in Religion and Science (1935), suggesting that “another occasion for theological intervention to prevent the mitigation of human suffering was the discovery of anaes- thetics.”22
Perpetuating the myth, pathologist and medical writer Thomas Dormandy asserted in The Worst of Evils: The Fight against Pain (2006) that in the struggle over the use of chloroform obstetricians raised “comparatively mild objections” to its use, and they raised louder objections on “moral and religious grounds.” But physician objections paled “compared to the deep religious misgivings expressed both by ministers of the Kirk and by devout layman [sic].”23 RB Schoepflin from Galileo goes to Jail and other myths about science and religion.
Women are and have been subservient to men in almost every society in human history, including European pagan ones. Their status was worse in many ways in the Pagan ones, as noted in my previous post.
Non-Christian societies: Bad thing X is true
Pre-Christian societies: Bad thing X is true
Christian societies: Bad thing X is true (perhaps even mitigated slightly)
"OMG look how evil Christianity is! It ruined everything for everyone! It truly is the source of all evil!"
Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
Modern Western society owes a lot to variety of sources and cultures. Christianity has long taken most of the credit.
amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
The main question for me involves how rights would look if paganism where enabled to evolve with history to reach the modernity we are in now. Arguably, things would not be the same in a systems where the cultures thought about powerful goddesses, and developed them in tandem with the eventuality of a more secular social order. In a system where women could rule germanic tribes, per tacitus, or could be extremely powerful priestesses, per ibn fadlan, this doesn't seem to consign them to typical biblical roles for women. Eve seems to get a bad rap, and Mary seems to be merely the vessel give transit to something else. How does their status and power compare to the likes of an Iduna or Hel for example
Well, then what's going on with the women in the nibelungenlied legend and its cognates in the eddas? That whole story is about heroes trying to gain marriage consent isn't it..
Augustus
…
There were powerful women in Christian cultures too. In both it was the exception rather than the norm.
They had powerful female gods in ancient Athens, including their patron Athena, yet their treatment of women at times was not far off the Taliban. Women were property.
Ancient and medieval cultures were massively patriarchal. The adoption of Christianity was not the cause of this.
We also might not have got a 'more secular' social order had pagan religions remained dominant, as secularism emerged in a Christian context that may, or may not, have had an analogue in a very different cultural environment.
It's also 13th C which is somewhat late.
amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
well, couldn't that depend on one's faith in the longevity of oral traditions.. the tale seems to connect events six or seven hundred years earlier, to the burgundians. That calls to mind the burgundian code, which I found interesting once.. what was your interpretation of how women were treated in that? There seem to be articles with interpret it as having some degree of sympathy to them
lukethethird
unknown member
The notion that Christianity had anything to do with the end of slavery is preposterous. Correlation is not necessarily causation. The industrial revolution was the catalyst, Christians fought Christians to end slavery due to the continuation of slavery upheld by Christianity in the U.S. long after the onset of the industrial revolution.