Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Faith
Recently acquired a full length biography of Margaret Clitheroe; published by Burn & Oates, carrying the imprimatur and previously owned by a small nunnery so probably OK.
On this reading, I am very puzzled as to why a good looking young mum with a prosperous butcher for a husband, should convert to the old faith - she had been brought up in the times of unsettled faith after Henry VIII had stirred everything up - and be prepared to die, in good cheer, in an unpleasant way for that faith. Puzzled why someone with so much to lose in this world should do such a thing for the next. Was she more or less mad? Would she be on medication for her own protection if she was living now?
I also read about a number of priests who went to their execution happy in the knowledge that they were about to take lunch with the lord. Which ties in well with the crack made by Richard III in the play written about the same time that Clarence's family should be grateful that he, Richard, had helped him on his way to heaven. A more complex joke in those days of true believers. A modern audience just laughs at the stupidity of it.
Another puzzle was talk of sacrifice. That our lord was such an angry man that he needed his only son to be crucified, to die the unpleasant death of common criminals, in order to slake his anger. Nothing less would do. And that we chose to invent such a lord to worship. I can just about understand that one might have so little anger management on board that one needed a few deaths to slake it - I have read something of the sort about Ivan the Terrible - but to make such a one the all highest seems bizarre. Primitive.
On a lower note, I have been wondering about the use of the suffix 'ese'. So one has Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Burmese and Javanese. Is this some relic of colonialism in the far east? But then I remember Bearnese, a person from Bearn, cropping up in Fred Vargas. Then Maltese. So we have the name for the inhabitants of a place and the name for the language that they speak derived by adding a suffix from the name of the place. Which does not work with Germany, France or England. Is the drill that there are special arrangements for the countries which we talk about the most, in the way that the most common verbs are usually irregular, and then there is a bunch of rules covering the rest? Names of place ending in 'm' or 'n' get 'ese'. Names of place ending in something else get something else. Clearly something to ponder on a rainy day.
PS: another geek note. Good that the Isle of Wight County Council still sees fit to run an open access and free internet facility in the formerly important town of Brading, but bad that their setup blocks copy and paste from notepad. With the result that I fail to get the accent appropriate into Bearn. I have come across this problem in this sort of facility before; must be something to do with providing an appropriate level of security.
On this reading, I am very puzzled as to why a good looking young mum with a prosperous butcher for a husband, should convert to the old faith - she had been brought up in the times of unsettled faith after Henry VIII had stirred everything up - and be prepared to die, in good cheer, in an unpleasant way for that faith. Puzzled why someone with so much to lose in this world should do such a thing for the next. Was she more or less mad? Would she be on medication for her own protection if she was living now?
I also read about a number of priests who went to their execution happy in the knowledge that they were about to take lunch with the lord. Which ties in well with the crack made by Richard III in the play written about the same time that Clarence's family should be grateful that he, Richard, had helped him on his way to heaven. A more complex joke in those days of true believers. A modern audience just laughs at the stupidity of it.
Another puzzle was talk of sacrifice. That our lord was such an angry man that he needed his only son to be crucified, to die the unpleasant death of common criminals, in order to slake his anger. Nothing less would do. And that we chose to invent such a lord to worship. I can just about understand that one might have so little anger management on board that one needed a few deaths to slake it - I have read something of the sort about Ivan the Terrible - but to make such a one the all highest seems bizarre. Primitive.
On a lower note, I have been wondering about the use of the suffix 'ese'. So one has Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Burmese and Javanese. Is this some relic of colonialism in the far east? But then I remember Bearnese, a person from Bearn, cropping up in Fred Vargas. Then Maltese. So we have the name for the inhabitants of a place and the name for the language that they speak derived by adding a suffix from the name of the place. Which does not work with Germany, France or England. Is the drill that there are special arrangements for the countries which we talk about the most, in the way that the most common verbs are usually irregular, and then there is a bunch of rules covering the rest? Names of place ending in 'm' or 'n' get 'ese'. Names of place ending in something else get something else. Clearly something to ponder on a rainy day.
PS: another geek note. Good that the Isle of Wight County Council still sees fit to run an open access and free internet facility in the formerly important town of Brading, but bad that their setup blocks copy and paste from notepad. With the result that I fail to get the accent appropriate into Bearn. I have come across this problem in this sort of facility before; must be something to do with providing an appropriate level of security.
# posted by Jim @ 1:28 AM 
