cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

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Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

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From:

selenak

re: Bertha: Also she stayed married to himm; once the excommunication series started, she could have deserted him and fled to the bosom of the Church, even without such sensational accusations as his second wife did, yet she did not, and instead went on the mid winter alpine crossing with him, risking eternal damnation herself.

(Reminder that the way this medieval excommunication of a monarch business worked was that it not only banned the monarch himself from all sacraments but also not only allowed but pushed anyone who'd ever sworn an oath to him to rejecting that oath, and absolved them from all duties to him. This is why it was such a powerful instrument (originally), it basically gave all the nobility and the family a shoot to kill or at least drop licence. I say at first, because by the time we've arrived at the Emperors Frederick of Hohenstaufen, both Barbarossa, his sons and his grandson were, well, not blasé, but far more hardened to it, and also they managed to keep many more of the nobility AND the bishops on their side. Fast forward a few centuries, and of course Elizabeth I, the child of a schism, got excommunicated, too, and it had no practical effect at all (which is why later Popes upped the ante to declare it was the duty of her Catholic subjects to assassinate her, at which point life became really hard for English Catholics.)

Theatre history note: Luigi Pirandello's play Enrico IV isn't actually about Henry IV himself but about an Italian aristocrat who believes himself to be Henry IV. Ironically enough, said aristocrat ships himself with Mathilda of Tuscany!

From:

cahn

Reminder that the way this medieval excommunication of a monarch business worked was that it not only banned the monarch himself from all sacraments but also not only allowed but pushed anyone who'd ever sworn an oath to him to rejecting that oath, and absolved them from all duties to him. This is why it was such a powerful instrument (originally), it basically gave all the nobility and the family a shoot to kill or at least drop licence.

Oh wooooow. Yeah, I didn't know that.

(Surely someone has written tropey stuff about people struggling with this oath rejection business? Schiller, maybe?)

From:

selenak

Alas, Schiller died before the rediscovery of the Middle Ages really caught on. (This was a 19th century phenomenon.) Also, I think the whole question of medieval faith would have been deeply alien to him. Note that his drama cycle set during the 30 Years War - a war that was about many things, but did start out as being about religion - avoids having actual sincerely religious characters altogether. (Wallenstein himself is into astronomy, which is not the same thing. Among the various other pov characters who get intense dramatic treatment, I don't think there's one for whom religion is a motivating force.) And Don Carlos has a cynical evil priest in Domingo and an evil ideological Grand Inquisitor whose dogma consists of the individual being nothing and not much else, and Philip who is tragic and lonely, and who doesn't seem to get anything positive out of his faith. The conversation he has with the Grand Inquisitor is chillingly effective as a dramatic scene, but it's also how a late 18th century writer of the Enlightenment with a Protestant background imagines a Catholic monarch talking to an Inquisitor. Conversely, while Protestantism is name checked and dismissed as something motivating our hero of the Enlightenment (when Philip talks to Posa, early on Philip asks whether Posa is a Protestant and Posa replies "your faith, Sire, is the same as mine"), it's actually amazing how mkuch it's NOT mentioned as a key issue of the rebelling Netherlands. Our late 18th century Schiller presents this as a modern (to himself) fight for freedom and independence and national identity, not as something where the majority of Dutch being Protestants is now an issue.

(Sidenote: it's not that all these other factors weren't important in the 80 years long Netherlands vs Spain struggle, they absolutely were and became more and more so, but still, by avoiding the religious question which early on certainly was a key factor, Schiller for example also avoids having to explain how on earth Carlos not just joining but leading the struggle of the Dutch rebells would work on the religious front in Posa's plans. Was he supposed to convert? Would he have minded or would he have been delighted? We don't know, because whatever Carlos' religious feelings, we don't hear about them.)

What I'm getting at: I don't think Schiller could have written a drama where the hero has a loyalty conflict because the Pope has excommunicated his monarch without writing a hero who actually does believe the Pope has the power to do so (otherwise there's no conflict), and this in turn would have been impossible for him to write because the medieval mindset of intense (Catholic) faith was so very alien to him.

From:

cahn

Ahhhhh this is really interesting, I had not really internalized how alien the medieval mindset of intense faith would be for Schiller but that makes perfect sense with what I know about Don Carlos.

...And of course Verdi's opera, composed in the 19th century, is very much more concerned with presenting religious faith as something that the characters feel strongly about (Elisabeth being perhaps the most salient example as a single character, as her religion is a fairly strong component of her operatic character, whereas in Schiller, of course, it's not -- but then of course there's also the opera interpolations of the auto-da-fe and everyone kneeling for the Grand Inquisitor).