Post by Big Brother on Jul 17, 2004 6:40:21 GMT -5
Not sure where to put this thread. Lolua, feel free to move it if you feel this is the wrong place.
Early this morning, around 4am, I poked my head in the computer room to see if Lolua would get the heck off the internet already so I could log on. Out of morbid curiosity, I asked what she was doing that took 5 hours, and was informed that she was working with our own Mlle Bienvenue on the backstory for some sort of HP-related RPG campaign. The issue they were working through was "what was the cirruculum at Hogwarts when the school first opened".
An interesting question, and I promptly asked if they were planning on including a course of theology or other Catholic-themed religious study. "Of course not, this is a Wizarding School", was Lolua's answer.
Ah, but we know from the HP books that, right from the outset, Hogwarts accepted Muggle-born wizards and witches, over the objections of Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of the school. Hogwarts having been founded sometime before the Norman conquest of England in 1066 AD, for the first several centuries, any Muggle-born students would have been born and raised in a culture where pretty much everyone was VERY Catholic indeed. Putting them in a school that did not base its curriculum on the firm foundation of Catholic dogma would have convinced such students, not to mention their Muggle parents, that the Witchcraft being taught there was indeed Satanic in nature, and they would have run away screaming, and returned with a team of Grand Inquisitors in tow (or the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, if the Inquisition hadn't officially started yet). Now, a Hogwarts with Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, and the two witchie-poos still hanging around would undoubtedly been able to survive a mere inconvenience such as an army of witch-hating peasants armed with pitchforks and bad hygiene, but once word got around (this being before the Statute of Secrecy was passed in the 1600's) that Hogwarts was a non-Catholic school of Magic, they'd never get another muggle-born student. At least, not until the Renaissance came around.
So...how did Medieval headmasters at Hogwarts explain the relationship between Magic and Catholicism?
JKR pretty much leaves muggle religions out of the HP books, which may have been intended to mollify complaints from the Religious Right about the books supposed "Satanic" content. But I get the impression that any such Christian fundamentalists who do actually read the book would be equally offended by the idea that a book centers on a hero who DOESN'T eat, sleep, and breathe Christianity, as they would be by a hero who openly worships the Devil. Just as Osama Bin Laden's real beef with the USA is the fact that we enshrine Freedom of Religion as a founding principle, real Christian Fundies consider it heresy to have Christianity NOT be the bright center around which your entire existence revolves.
So how on Earth would Medieval wizards relate to Christianity, in an era where pretty much everyone felt that way (or at least felt that everyone SHOULD feel that way)?
Perhaps, since no coherent explanation has been offered in the books as to what exactly makes one person a Wizard and another person a Muggle (JKR has suggested it isn't really genetic, or at least if it is, it's at least as complicated a set of related genes as those that determine intelligence and so forth, not a simple set of limited genes like eye color or somesuch), the wizards of the time explained their magical powers as being a Gift from God, and tried to use prayer and Christian meditation they way modern-era wizards use memorization of spells and so forth. Perhaps they used the names of Saints as invocations for certain spells , calling upon St. Blaise when trying to use magic to save someone from Choking, and so forth. Perhaps they used Biblical passages as spell incantations ("Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin", for example).
Perhaps wizards tried to pass themselves off as simply one more odd monastic Catholic sect, like Opus Dei is today, or like the Jesuits sort of were during the Renaissance.
Which would have been interesting, once the Reformation came along. Perhaps the real spat between Luther and the Pope was over how to deal with the fact that Luther was a Wizard (or the Pope, take your pick).
Any further ideas on this matter from someone who isn't themselves an Atheist and thus ill-equipped to truly understand religious fanaticism?
Early this morning, around 4am, I poked my head in the computer room to see if Lolua would get the heck off the internet already so I could log on. Out of morbid curiosity, I asked what she was doing that took 5 hours, and was informed that she was working with our own Mlle Bienvenue on the backstory for some sort of HP-related RPG campaign. The issue they were working through was "what was the cirruculum at Hogwarts when the school first opened".
An interesting question, and I promptly asked if they were planning on including a course of theology or other Catholic-themed religious study. "Of course not, this is a Wizarding School", was Lolua's answer.
Ah, but we know from the HP books that, right from the outset, Hogwarts accepted Muggle-born wizards and witches, over the objections of Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of the school. Hogwarts having been founded sometime before the Norman conquest of England in 1066 AD, for the first several centuries, any Muggle-born students would have been born and raised in a culture where pretty much everyone was VERY Catholic indeed. Putting them in a school that did not base its curriculum on the firm foundation of Catholic dogma would have convinced such students, not to mention their Muggle parents, that the Witchcraft being taught there was indeed Satanic in nature, and they would have run away screaming, and returned with a team of Grand Inquisitors in tow (or the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, if the Inquisition hadn't officially started yet). Now, a Hogwarts with Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, and the two witchie-poos still hanging around would undoubtedly been able to survive a mere inconvenience such as an army of witch-hating peasants armed with pitchforks and bad hygiene, but once word got around (this being before the Statute of Secrecy was passed in the 1600's) that Hogwarts was a non-Catholic school of Magic, they'd never get another muggle-born student. At least, not until the Renaissance came around.
So...how did Medieval headmasters at Hogwarts explain the relationship between Magic and Catholicism?
JKR pretty much leaves muggle religions out of the HP books, which may have been intended to mollify complaints from the Religious Right about the books supposed "Satanic" content. But I get the impression that any such Christian fundamentalists who do actually read the book would be equally offended by the idea that a book centers on a hero who DOESN'T eat, sleep, and breathe Christianity, as they would be by a hero who openly worships the Devil. Just as Osama Bin Laden's real beef with the USA is the fact that we enshrine Freedom of Religion as a founding principle, real Christian Fundies consider it heresy to have Christianity NOT be the bright center around which your entire existence revolves.
So how on Earth would Medieval wizards relate to Christianity, in an era where pretty much everyone felt that way (or at least felt that everyone SHOULD feel that way)?
Perhaps, since no coherent explanation has been offered in the books as to what exactly makes one person a Wizard and another person a Muggle (JKR has suggested it isn't really genetic, or at least if it is, it's at least as complicated a set of related genes as those that determine intelligence and so forth, not a simple set of limited genes like eye color or somesuch), the wizards of the time explained their magical powers as being a Gift from God, and tried to use prayer and Christian meditation they way modern-era wizards use memorization of spells and so forth. Perhaps they used the names of Saints as invocations for certain spells , calling upon St. Blaise when trying to use magic to save someone from Choking, and so forth. Perhaps they used Biblical passages as spell incantations ("Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin", for example).
Perhaps wizards tried to pass themselves off as simply one more odd monastic Catholic sect, like Opus Dei is today, or like the Jesuits sort of were during the Renaissance.
Which would have been interesting, once the Reformation came along. Perhaps the real spat between Luther and the Pope was over how to deal with the fact that Luther was a Wizard (or the Pope, take your pick).
Any further ideas on this matter from someone who isn't themselves an Atheist and thus ill-equipped to truly understand religious fanaticism?
