loggers. Yes, if someone asked what was the favorite pastime of the saints in the Middle Ages, the answer most relevant-although perhaps not the most gospel-is precisely this.
close our eyes for a moment and imagine anywhere uprooted trees and felled logs, worse, destroyed entire forests. It's the little idyllic landscape is painted in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire until the end of the Middle Ages-and even beyond, in the eastern part of Prussia. From
provincial council of Carthage, who inaugurated the fashion back in 397 AD, to the synods of Alba (1626) and Alexandria (1702), prohibiting the holding of the festival in May, is a succession of crusades against the trees. Arbores demonibus consacratae, trees consecrated to the spirits of evil, they are the most dangerous rival with which all the samples of medieval hagiography are to be measured in the countryside. And among these seasoned preachers, there are those who leave us pens. How Adalbert, bishop of Prague, in 997 AD made object of a hectic launch javelins during a Mass celebrated on the altar which he had built shortly before recklessly, rather than a secular arbor. But when they are not Christians at the expense, the trees grow back the same, in spite of the zeal of the preachers. This is the case with the famous walnut Benevento, killed in 663 AD by Saint Barbato and miraculously grown back a few miles later, according to legend passed down in the Treaty of Benevento De nuce witch doctor Peter Piper. How about, instead of felled pine 'with heroic faith in the Lord "from St. Martin-Yes, that's what the coat-, bishop of the city of Tours?
But if this series of anecdotes and not enough want some more illustrious name-I know, some big news of the faith-which is always, then consider the paradigmatic case of Benedict of Nursia, currently favored by the holy Apostolic See; moved strong intent missionaries, arrived in that of Monte Cassino, the first thing you care to make Benedict was to destroy a grove sacred to Apollo which stood on the summit of Mt. But if the saints and preachers often wielded axes in front of beech and oak woods, the so-called 'secular' were certainly not less. Just think of the paladin, Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, who in 772 AD, arrived in Geismar, Irminsul felled the oak sacred to the Saxons held because the axis of the world.
Yet medieval Christianity did not play against these beliefs, so rooted in the rural world to threaten the survival of many monasteries in the countryside at the dawn of the thirteenth century. The scene that emerges is more or less this: in front of advancing the new civilization city, bearer of the bourgeois values \u200b\u200bof trade and competition unknown to feudal world - "the reason of mercatura," as called then-Boccaccio, the secular clergy through a phase of deep decline, we are in the early '200. Holed up in Bishop's Palace in Perugia, Viterbo and Rome, forced to shuttle to avoid the heretical pauperistic storm raging in the city, the papal court is gradually losing control of the countryside, where the hearths pagan never switched off entirely. Urge a member of the Christian world which brings the church to his people, especially after the turn theocratic imposed by Innocent III in 1215 and continued by his successor Honorius.
from the corridors of the Lateran to the most minute huts of the countryside, he begins to talk of a man of deep charisma, which is a display of supernatural powers and was a broad consensus in spite of not a cleric, let alone a bishop, but a secular son of merchants, perhaps it is this detail to make it pleasing to the men and women whose sermon. His name is Francis, has already visited more than once in audience by the Pope to ask to be recognized by its fraternitas hierarchies. And despite the refusal of Pope Innocent, has not resigned, over time building a community of followers, especially in the countryside, between the old pagan, has its strong point. What is the real secret of his success? [Article continues here accompanied by many more images ...]
