18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 38

[cahn]

Gonna go ahead and make this post even though Yuletide is coming...

But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!

Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:

Five times Fredersdorf has to stay behind - and one time Friedrich doesn't leave.

Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:

Friedrich had started to talk to him because he had thought of him as a bit of a ditz.
And now here he was. Here he was months later, bundled up in this very same man’s blankets with a cup of hot coffee in front of him, its scent mixing with that of Katte’s French perfume.
_
Fluffy One Shot about one traitorous Crown Prince and the sycophant he accidentally fell for.

Comments

Re: Catholicism

[mildred_of_midgard]

Heh. Well, I mean... the holy small-c catholic and apostolic church hasn't included Arians since the first few centuries AD,

Agreed, but it's also not just acceptance or lack thereof of the creeds that the early writers were using as their basis to reject other sects as "non-Catholic." The Donatists accepted the same creeds and held the same theological beliefs as the "Catholics", but did not accept the authority of the state church, and were thus considered not catholic/Catholic by their opponents. (Who wrote with a lowercase c, at last as far as I know without checking the manuscripts, but that's how it's transcribed in Latin by modern editors.) As for whether the Donatists considered themselves catholic/Catholic, I don't have proof, but I would be surprised if they didn't.

The curious historical linguist in me has now prompted me to check three more sources:

1. Otto von Freising, since I'm reading his bio and he's writing only a century after the East-West Schism.
2. The Oxford English Dictionary.
3. One of the books I own on early Christianity and read a few years ago.

Otto von Freising, as far as I can tell from flipping through:

- Uses "catholic" (which the English translators render with a capital C) mostly in the "catholic and apostolic church" or "orthodox catholic faith" sense, and in fact most of his usages that I saw were prefaced with "orthodox".

- Mostly uses "Roman church" to talk about his own church and distinguish it from the Greek church.

- Does use "Roman Catholic" once that I saw.

- Points out that the Armenians were calling their religious leader "Catholic" too.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives as one of the several definitions of the word "Catholic":

Designating the ancient Christian Church before the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Churches in the 11th cent., or any Church standing in historical continuity with it claiming shared doctrine, system, and practice.

With a note:

The designation was assumed by the Western or Latin Church after the Great Schism in distinction to Eastern or Orthodox (this continues in historical writing). It was claimed as its exclusive designation by the Latin Church that remained under the Roman obedience after the Reformation in the 16th cent. (cf. sense A. 5). It has also been used to include the Anglican Church regarded as a continuation of both the ancient and Latin Churches (cf. Anglo-Catholic adj. 1). The implied sense is ‘the Church or Churches which now truly represent the ancient undivided Church of Christendom’.

Emphasis mine. Basically: the more alternatives arise, the more the definition gets narrowed to "Us and not you, and now not you, and now also not you either." And that last sentence in the note is exactly why you have Armenians and Greeks and Anglicans and so forth continuing to call themselves "Catholic" long after the Romans have decided to exclude them.

A New History of Early Christianity says:

The word Catholic derives from the Greek for 'universal'. Strictly speaking, historians use it of both eastern and western churches before the formal split between them in 1054, from when it was used only of the western church.

Which is consistent with what I've encountered in my reading.

Salon: the place where you make one casual remark, and people are still having an in-depth discussion of technicalities a month later. ;)