The Historical Mind-Set

Siri Kirpal

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Aaanyway, to be more on-topic: I cannot enjoy a historical novel if the people in it feel and sound completely modern. While I believe that we as humans have not changed at all during the past thousands of years (we share the same emotions, fears, desires, relationships, etc.), political views, society in general and beliefs certainly have, and I don't feel like a historical novel is being honest with me if it "shields" me from those differing views.
I don't mean that the book has to "approve" of the thoughts of the period. A character thinking one thing and that thing being supported as "right" by the book thematically are two completely different things. For example: A victorian gentleman, the MC, thinks that women are good for nothing. This is his opinion and I'm happy that he has it - after all, there were a lot of men during the period who believed that (though there must have been tons of exceptions, naturally).
This (IMO) is a plot supporting and even preaching his cause:
MC goes on heroic quests, female sidekicks try to help him out, they all fail miserably because of their feminine qualities. Author expects reader to laugh at the sillyness of women.
And this a plot which supports a modern POV, without changing his opinions:
MC goes on heroic quests and is occasionally helped out successfully be a female character. Though he may continue to believe women useless and make all kinds of excuses for these events, the reader sees that his (and/or society's) views are at odds with reality.
While this is not really a perfect example, I hope it helps me to illustrate my point: historical POVs are fine, but I like a book's themes to support the modern worldview.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

In the given example, I agree with you. Sexism and social status stuff are less an issue now. Though ageism is more a problem.

AND, unfortunately, modern POV on religion is a bit like the Victorian POV on pornography. (Says a woman who had to hide her religious inclinations from her modern parents. And if you go into the Beta Reader section of this forum, there's a thread where people say what they will and won't read. Many say they won't read religious works without any apology; the few who say they don't read gay/lesbian tend to apologize.)

We forget that religious women provided girls with educations, provided young men from disadvantaged families with a chance at a better life, provided early hospitals and orphanages, and in general, made life bearable. That's not even talking about the religious ecstasy that many modern people poo-poo or haven't heard of or can't quite wrap their minds around. (A lot fewer people suffered from depression in days that, to our way of thinking, ought to have been more depressing. I don't think it's a coincidence.)

So, I'm not going to buy the argument that the narrator needs to make a case that modern is better a hundred percent.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

gothicangel

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So, I'm not going to buy the argument that the narrator needs to make a case that modern is better a hundred percent.

The modern era can be just as repugnant, than elements of the past. I wonder in 1000 years what people will think of us for creating atomic bombs, burning fossil fuels and hunting species into extinction.

I think that's why I enjoy HF. It's a great way of escaping the modern world for a few hours. :)
 

pdr

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Ah yes.

gothicangel, and other posters. Historicals should be era honest.

I always fume when I read those historicals which are all about the smell, dirt and muck and mess of, usually, some time in the 500s to 1700s AD.

A. The locals wouldn't notice the ordinary mess. I mean we don't do we?

B. Like today there were slum areas where people didn't care BUT, and I keep saying this, dog muck was bought by the tanners, horse manure and market mess from sheep and cattle and pigs all got sold. Everything was recycled and reused and had value. Clothes lasted for years with several owners!

C. There are always people who complain. Think of the letters in your local newsrag. If a future writer only took those letters for truth then they will only write of the dirt muck and deadly mess of the 20th and 21stC.

And, ooh! Siri you are female? Why did I think you were male!
 

Hip-Hop-a-potamus

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I think that's why I enjoy HF. It's a great way of escaping the modern world for a few hours. :)

And that's why I love all you fine folk and rarely venture into other forums. 'Cause we think the same. And stuff.

:banana:
 

buz

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Fun topic. :D
A. The locals wouldn't notice the ordinary mess. I mean we don't do we?
Well, yes and no. We're more desensitized to that mess with which we are accustomed. But there are always messes going beyond that, and even a decent level of desensitization cannot numb it completely.

What I mean to say is, I spend a good half of my waking hours picking manure and urine-soaked bedding, and while there is a baseline of not-caring about the general scents, I do notice the smell if it gets wet and compacted or the horse is eating a weird supplement or the pee is particularly concentrated or if it's particularly fresh or stale or blah blah blah. It's very easy for things to go beyond what I don't notice. And the smell of concentrated urine will actually insert itself into your face and is difficult to em, get used to. :D

More on topic: the mindset thing is interesting. On the one hand, as has been said, humans are humans and have been for a while (in terms of historical time, anyway). On the other, we are deeply twisted by culture. There are going to be differences. We all modify our bodies in some way, but Western people today see Chinese footbinding as wtf, or headshaping as alien mimicry because why the hell else would anyone do that. (OBVIOUSLY)

But when the author picks out the differences and focuses on them and makes the story about how different those people are off being Chinese with their weird broken feet wowie zowie, it makes the story not so good for me. :D I like it to be included, but, you know...more...subtly. I want the people and the story first, and the history second. Or all at once together, inwardly downwardly, pulsating, striving, ending and unending...

(Somehow I always manage to quote something stupid gaah)

Anyway. Yeeahhup.

And something else that bothers me: When Historical People constantly use proper, clean, upstanding, not-vulgar, non-informal language. And their intentions are lofty and always full of Honor (or EViiilll).

I subscribe to this theory.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1741#comic
 
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Why would anyone want to read a historical novel that was about contemporary people in funny clothes?
 

Siri Kirpal

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And, ooh! Siri you are female? Why did I think you were male!

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Unless my husband and I have things really confused, yes, I'm female. :) (In case you have any doubt, you might look at my post in the ultrasound thread in Story Research.) Why did you think I was male? Because of the way I write?? :)

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

pdr

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Yes, but ...

buzhideo, you're splitting hairs. You know what I mean. It's the school of historical writing where:

All pubs have dirty whores for barmaids, the beer is sour and undrinkable, drunks keeping vomiting on themselves and other people and pickpockets abound.

All streets are as filthy as a shambles.

Everyone empties slop and piss pots at all times by throwing them out of their window.

No one obeys the strict city regulations or ordinances which carrying punishments like huge fines, sitting in the stocks and general social opprobrium, and which are enforced in each small canton/district/precinct/area (like a city block you US people) by a warden or constable.

Hah!

But you have reminded me of another hate in historical novels. The superior writer who, as you pointed out, mentions something like foot binding in such a way as to leave the reader knowing that we readers today are so much less primitive and so much more knowledgeable. Grrr!

I always want to grab such a writer and dump them in our New Zealand Bush with a knife and the tiny tin containing a survival pack and see how they manage. I know my characters from the 17thC would have no problem, even my Victorian heroine would manage to make herself comfortable. But I doubt Ms or Mr Superior Writer would. There are skills we have and skills our ancestors had. Our skills are not better than those of our ancestors, just different.

Why write or read historicals if you don't love the era, the mind set, and the chance to live in the past?
 

Flicka

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To be fair, yes, a good number of people did ignore such regulations - insofar they existed. Stockholm was notoriously gross and the regulations were limited to the city proper, but there was no regulation for the slums surrounding it. And lots of things didn't disgust people for the simple fact that they had no notion of bacteria and how diseases are transferred. One cholera outbreak in the 19th century was because they emptied the latrines over the water resorvoir on Söder in Stockholm because they didn't think about bacteria seeping into the water. Also, famously, dictors could go from an autopsy to a delivery without washing their hands. Unthinkable to us, but natural in the 19th century.

When I go out, I don't reflect on the exhaustion fumes in the air, the vague and constant humming of traffic far off or notice the occasional cigarette butt or graffitti. They don't register because they're always there. I visited a town recently where they make paper and almost gagged from the stink from the factory, but the locals didn't notice. Likewise, I think people who shared house with goats in the winter (common here in the olden days) didn't notice the smell or were disgusted by rubbing elbows with others in a cold, smelly outhouse when nature called (again, common here - my dad had it like that when he was a kid) or were appalled because there were beggars. On the other hand, they'd probably vomit from the fumes of a single car.

Not better or worse than us. Just with different experiences.
 

Shakesbear

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Why write or read historicals if you don't love the era, the mind set, and the chance to live in the past?

This.


I would speculate that the problem for some writers is being able to access the mindset for their era. How to get into the head of someone who lived in a totally different social, economic. religious and political era? That is something that always makes me think that how ever hard I try I will never get it right. I look at as many primary sources as I can, visit houses that were built during the era I am writing about and try to think myself into the mindset sometimes with success, sometimes not.

Sometimes experiences can be so deceptive. About eighteen months ago the road that runs by my house was closed to traffic for a month. No traffic noise at all. I remember feeling very smug about the peace and quiet and thinking that it must have been that peaceful before the advent of motor cars. Stupid really, to forget that there would have been horses, carts,carriages and animals being taken to market. Car fumes replaced the delightful aroma of animal excrement. To get into the mindset of some one living where I live, say about two hundred years ago, is not as easy as I thought it would be.
 

buz

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buzhideo, you're splitting hairs. You know what I mean.

You overestimate me. :D I did in fact interpret what you said in a less-than-correct fashion, thinking you meant that things just wouldn't be gross in general. Derp derp.

Of course, though, when you talk about ordinances and stuff, you're referring to particular cultures/time periods/etc. I mean, I can go to outlying areas of xxx city today and see banks of little canals that are actually comprised themselves of trash, with trash floating in the water and sometimes dead things. Sometimes large dead things. And people will rinse things out in this water or their kids will play in it. And even the larger water sources...1858 and the Great Stink of the Thames, am I right?

But I'm talking about our general disrespect for water. You were talking about something else and I get that; just babbling for funsies. :D The absolute need to show how horrible and disgusting and vile some Historical Period was in every respect with unrelenting poop and vomit everywhere just for the sake of showing its grossness is quite annoying. (Well, the spirit of it is. Personally I like tales of poop and vomit but, arguably, I have mental problems.)
There are skills we have and skills our ancestors had. Our skills are not better than those of our ancestors, just different.

I don't even have any skills. If I got thrown out into the woods I would probably eat something poisonous on the second day and die in my own poop and vomit. :D

And that reminded me of another thing, somehow...:D

When people assume that people couldn't do the things they actually did and look for some other explanation. In extreme cases, I mean things like "aliens had to have built the pyramids"; less extreme is something like "they could not have been brought to a different state of consciousness by religious fervor alone; they had to have ingested some sort of intoxicant or toxin."

Not that I'm saying people wouldn't ingest intoxicants or toxins at religious ceremonies sometimes, but it's not like it's a necessary prerequisite of every single "inexplicable" circumstance of what we see as dissociative experiences or whathaveyou.

That made no sense. I should stop talking. :D
 

angeliz2k

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Fun topic. :D
Well, yes and no. We're more desensitized to that mess with which we are accustomed. But there are always messes going beyond that, and even a decent level of desensitization cannot numb it completely.

What I mean to say is, I spend a good half of my waking hours picking manure and urine-soaked bedding, and while there is a baseline of not-caring about the general scents, I do notice the smell if it gets wet and compacted or the horse is eating a weird supplement or the pee is particularly concentrated or if it's particularly fresh or stale or blah blah blah. It's very easy for things to go beyond what I don't notice. And the smell of concentrated urine will actually insert itself into your face and is difficult to em, get used to. :D

More on topic: the mindset thing is interesting. On the one hand, as has been said, humans are humans and have been for a while (in terms of historical time, anyway). On the other, we are deeply twisted by culture. There are going to be differences. We all modify our bodies in some way, but Western people today see Chinese footbinding as wtf, or headshaping as alien mimicry because why the hell else would anyone do that. (OBVIOUSLY)

But when the author picks out the differences and focuses on them and makes the story about how different those people are off being Chinese with their weird broken feet wowie zowie, it makes the story not so good for me. :D I like it to be included, but, you know...more...subtly. I want the people and the story first, and the history second. Or all at once together, inwardly downwardly, pulsating, striving, ending and unending...

(Somehow I always manage to quote something stupid gaah)

Anyway. Yeeahhup.

And something else that bothers me: When Historical People constantly use proper, clean, upstanding, not-vulgar, non-informal language. And their intentions are lofty and always full of Honor (or EViiilll).

I subscribe to this theory.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1741#comic

Somebody's been watching Ancient Aliens. Clearly, ancient man placed his gods in the skies because they were actually aliens. I love the non sequitors on that show! I mean, people who lived thousands of years ago clearly couldn't figure this stuff out on their own. It was the aliens who did it.

Why would anyone want to read a historical novel that was about contemporary people in funny clothes?

I don't know why, but apparently some readers do. That's the premise behind a lot of poorly-done bodice-ripper type romances, isn't it? Like the TV show The Tudors, it's just an excuse to have sex while (no longer) wearing fancy costumes.

This.

I would speculate that the problem for some writers is being able to access the mindset for their era. How to get into the head of someone who lived in a totally different social, economic. religious and political era? That is something that always makes me think that how ever hard I try I will never get it right. I look at as many primary sources as I can, visit houses that were built during the era I am writing about and try to think myself into the mindset sometimes with success, sometimes not.

Sometimes experiences can be so deceptive. About eighteen months ago the road that runs by my house was closed to traffic for a month. No traffic noise at all. I remember feeling very smug about the peace and quiet and thinking that it must have been that peaceful before the advent of motor cars. Stupid really, to forget that there would have been horses, carts,carriages and animals being taken to market. Car fumes replaced the delightful aroma of animal excrement. To get into the mindset of some one living where I live, say about two hundred years ago, is not as easy as I thought it would be.

I grew up in an old house (1830's? 1840's? it's impossible to say since the deeds going back to the 1770's only mention the land, not the house on it). It's set back from the road amongst the fields. Most winter nights you could lay there and it was pure silence. It would hum with spring peepers in the spring and the sound of rain and thunder in the summer. No heating upstairs, no hum of ventilation (I hate the sound of ventilation). Only the occasional car off in the distance. Sometimes a creaking floorboard or an errant cricket who got into the house. That's why I love and miss that place!
 

DeleyanLee

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I think that's why I enjoy HF. It's a great way of escaping the modern world for a few hours. :)

I actually get this escape from various types of fiction (like Fantasy), but what I really love about good historical fiction is getting to know the people, the way they think, the decisions they make and why, the very different culture they live in.

The big difference between Fantasy and Historical is that Historical is always a human culture, a human mind-set that's so very different than the one I know. In Fantasy, it's not guaranteed that it's the human culture that's different so I don't have that base connection with the race I'm reading, regardless of how cool they might be.

Good historical story gives me insights into the how's and why's of how my own world grew into the way it is. It gives me insights into the universalness of being human that I don't necessarily get from other things I read.

So when I read novels where, say, New Kingdom Egyptians have blatantly Victorian mindset and morals when even the History channel knows better--those books get wallbanged and I don't trust the author's work ever again (true story). Or when I start to read a novel focusing on the worst (usually sexual) rumors degrading a noted woman's life and not bothering to mention the things she did that made her noted to history, I have to wonder about the general reading audience and the whole "sex sells" marketing mindset.
 

mayqueen

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So, I'm not going to buy the argument that the narrator needs to make a case that modern is better a hundred percent.
Yes yes yes. Especially about everything being dirty or backward or whatever. But can I also mention the use of magic and medicine? I get so sick of seeing modern mindsets about medicine and magic in historical novels. I'm not making the argument that anesthesia and modern medicine aren't awesome, because I'm not. But I hate historical fiction that has like a wink-wink to the reader about how primitive people used to be about medicine.

We know now under our current scientific regime that an amulet and some magic words won't cure a fever. But people did believe that. And I find that fascinating.

I also find fascinating all of the things that were heralded as scientific breakthroughs that we now find abhorrent (hydro-therapy, for example, or frontal lobotomies). It makes me wonder in a hundred years how much our cutting edge science will be viewed as completely backward.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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buzhideo, you're splitting hairs. You know what I mean. It's the school of historical writing where:

All pubs have dirty whores for barmaids, the beer is sour and undrinkable, drunks keeping vomiting on themselves and other people and pickpockets abound.

All streets are as filthy as a shambles.

Everyone empties slop and piss pots at all times by throwing them out of their window.

No one obeys the strict city regulations or ordinances which carrying punishments like huge fines, sitting in the stocks and general social opprobrium, and which are enforced in each small canton/district/precinct/area (like a city block you US people) by a warden or constable.

Hah!

But you have reminded me of another hate in historical novels. The superior writer who, as you pointed out, mentions something like foot binding in such a way as to leave the reader knowing that we readers today are so much less primitive and so much more knowledgeable. Grrr!

I always want to grab such a writer and dump them in our New Zealand Bush with a knife and the tiny tin containing a survival pack and see how they manage. I know my characters from the 17thC would have no problem, even my Victorian heroine would manage to make herself comfortable. But I doubt Ms or Mr Superior Writer would. There are skills we have and skills our ancestors had. Our skills are not better than those of our ancestors, just different.

Why write or read historicals if you don't love the era, the mind set, and the chance to live in the past?

Hmm, yeah, and people who talk all pop-eyed about Chinese foot-binding, and don't even blink at breast and lip implants.

Earlier this year I read a fascinating, if a little dense, history of engineering. It bounced all over (it was published posthumously from notes), but had some absolutely wonderful detail on, of all things, water and sewage in Paris in the sixteenth century. My gods, you would not believe how intricate the laws were about who could get how much of which water from where, and who was illegally tapping pipes, and who got special exceptions because they installed a public fountain on their external wall, and how intake and outflow were regulated and repaired, not to mention details of amazingly sophisticated ways pumps and wells and reservoirs were constructed.

Muddy tavern wench chamber pots phooey. These guys had aldermanic laws.
 

pdr

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Oh yes!

It's not that all people obeyed all those city ordinances, it's just that smug writers haven't done their research and don't seem to know they exist. Like today, some people obey and others don't!

If you think about how many of you live in or near towns and cities who still dump the sewage into the sea or a river, we've nothing to skite about. We know what happens to poison water and land but we still dump toxic chemicals, sewage and nuclear waste.

I'm not saying that people did know about bugs, but there were people who did know about drinking clean water. In the Middle Ages some people knew the castle/town well had to be kept clean and cleaned out regularly.

And many of the monasteries were set up in such a way that latrine rubbish was always downstream of water supplies. At Fountains Abbey water was diverted to clean the loos and not sent back to the river.

Think of those who escaped the plague because they kept rats trapped and flea numbers down. The Puritans were one group who had a Cleanliness is next to Godliness belief.

And we'll never get mindsets right but we can try. And yes our ancestors had a greater tolerance for muck and mess. But there are degrees. I see it today when town or non-farming visitors come and walk round the farm. They are most squeamish about avoiding cow pats and sheep pellets, dodge mud, and look askance at the manure heap. And some won't even eat the home killed meat though they are not vegetarian. They squirm at the thought of killing the lambs or pigs.

I'll go for more modern medicine ideas if they come from Arabs or Moors as their medicine was far superior to the hack and burn of the West. But magic? Huh? Superstitions or old wives tales maybe. But in Christian countries wasn't magic a blasphemy and Devil's work?
 

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It's not that all people obeyed all those city ordinances, it's just that smug writers haven't done their research and don't seem to know they exist. Like today, some people obey and others don't!

If you think about how many of you live in or near towns and cities who still dump the sewage into the sea or a river, we've nothing to skite about. We know what happens to poison water and land but we still dump toxic chemicals, sewage and nuclear waste.

I'm not saying that people did know about bugs, but there were people who did know about drinking clean water. In the Middle Ages some people knew the castle/town well had to be kept clean and cleaned out regularly.

Absolutely - in a sense I actually think hygiene deteriorated in the early modern times partly because people dismissed old, common-sense and experience-based rules as superstition and trusted the very immature and incomplete science instead. In combination with the enormous urban growth, that meant that cities were probably considerably filthier in the 19th century than in say, the 16th century.

There's a lovely passage in Smollett's Humphry Clinker where an old gentleman describes how the water in Bath is contaminated and why one shouldn't take the waters unless one wants to be poisoned. I think it's meant to be funny and eccentric, but sounds like it had been written today. :)

There's a really great book by a French historian (whose name I can't remember) called A History of Everyday Things that discusses things like water supply, heating and light, mainly in 17th and 18th century France. He mentions how in Diderot's Encyclopedia, it's suggested that the water supply in Paris could be improved by a system of water tanks on the roofs of buildings. Such a tank would supply the inhabitants of a household with plenty of water for their daily needs – almost 7.45 liters a person! One is to assume that in reality, few ordinary Parisians actually had this much water available.

So how much is 7.45 liters of water? About 1/3 of what the UNHCR finds necessary per person to prevent diseases from spreading in modern refugee camps, for starters. A modern bathtub contains about 180 liters of water. This means that the lucky Parisian who did have this marvelous tank would have to save up for about 3.5 weeks in order to fill a tub and have a full bath. And that would mean no drinking, no washing, no laundry, no dishing, no cooking and no gardening – for almost a month! Puts a perspective on things, doesn't it?

Anyway, we most certainly have nothing to brag about in regards to pollution today despite the fact that we should know better (considering how much research we've spent on finding out just how bad our behaviour is in the past 100 years). But people are and remain people - selfish, short-sighted and lazy.
 

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It's not that all people obeyed all those city ordinances, it's just that smug writers haven't done their research and don't seem to know they exist. Like today, some people obey and others don't!

If you think about how many of you live in or near towns and cities who still dump the sewage into the sea or a river, we've nothing to skite about. We know what happens to poison water and land but we still dump toxic chemicals, sewage and nuclear waste.

I'm not saying that people did know about bugs, but there were people who did know about drinking clean water. In the Middle Ages some people knew the castle/town well had to be kept clean and cleaned out regularly.

And many of the monasteries were set up in such a way that latrine rubbish was always downstream of water supplies. At Fountains Abbey water was diverted to clean the loos and not sent back to the river.

Think of those who escaped the plague because they kept rats trapped and flea numbers down. The Puritans were one group who had a Cleanliness is next to Godliness belief.

And we'll never get mindsets right but we can try. And yes our ancestors had a greater tolerance for muck and mess. But there are degrees. I see it today when town or non-farming visitors come and walk round the farm. They are most squeamish about avoiding cow pats and sheep pellets, dodge mud, and look askance at the manure heap. And some won't even eat the home killed meat though they are not vegetarian. They squirm at the thought of killing the lambs or pigs.

I'll go for more modern medicine ideas if they come from Arabs or Moors as their medicine was far superior to the hack and burn of the West. But magic? Huh? Superstitions or old wives tales maybe. But in Christian countries wasn't magic a blasphemy and Devil's work?

If magic = astrology then no it was not considered the Devil's work. It was an actual science at the time.
 

Flicka

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It wasn't so much that the church frowned upon 'magic' as it monopolised it. The church was perfectly ready to believe in miracles and the power of prayer, but to try to influence the world through other powers or means than God was considered all shade of wrong.

But the healing powers of relics was a well-known thing and insofar an illness was caused by a demon (which wasn't an unusual theory) it could be driven out by the proper means. And transubstantiation was doctrine pretty early on, and what is that if not superb magic performed by a priest?

So instead of pagan magic, there was priestly magic of a very similar kind.

If magic = astrology then no it was not considered the Devil's work. It was an actual science at the time.

The early church actually considered astrology pagan superstition. However, astronomy was considered all right and astrology sort of slipped in behind it. According to 8th century doctrine, it was OK to study the celestial bodies and learn more about them, but scrying in the stars was pagan nonsense.
 

mayqueen

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I'll go for more modern medicine ideas if they come from Arabs or Moors as their medicine was far superior to the hack and burn of the West. But magic? Huh? Superstitions or old wives tales maybe. But in Christian countries wasn't magic a blasphemy and Devil's work?
It wasn't so much that the church frowned upon 'magic' as it monopolised it. The church was perfectly ready to believe in miracles and the power of prayer, but to try to influence the world through other powers or means than God was considered all shade of wrong.

But the healing powers of relics was a well-known thing and insofar an illness was caused by a demon (which wasn't an unusual theory) it could be driven out by the proper means. And transubstantiation was doctrine pretty early on, and what is that if not superb magic performed by a priest?

So instead of pagan magic, there was priestly magic of a very similar kind.
Monopolized is a great word for it. I've been reading a lot of books on early Anglo-Saxon medicine and that's what the church essentially did. You had people using amulets and charms (alongside "reasonable" things like herbs and surgeries), but these were gradually replaced by relics and prayers. And these earlier magical beliefs could and did exist alongside religious beliefs without a problem. It's really fascinating, to me.

My gripe is with writers who portray these earlier systems of belief as backward or clearly misguided. Yeah, we know that now, but we have (modern) science.
 

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How to multiquote:

You know on the right there's a blue box that says "Quote"? Just to the right of it is a little blue square with double quotes and a plus sign in it.

Whee! Thanks!

There's a really great book by a French historian (whose name I can't remember) called A History of Everyday Things that discusses things like water supply, heating and light, mainly in 17th and 18th century France.

This sounds like a good companion to Fernand Braudel's Structures of Everyday Life. Just tried Googling - does Daniel Roche sound right?