Since any fantasy assumes counterfactual premises, Poul Anderson bases this particular historical fantasy novel on:
"...the naive, half-pagan mythology of peasants and seafarers in the early fourteenth century..." (p. viii)
- which he sharply distinguishes from Thomist theology. Indeed. In this mythology:
pictures and images turn their faces to the wall when a merman enters a church;
some rational beings, e.g., merpeople, do not have souls - but can be given them!
This contradicts not only what I believe now but also what I was told to believe in school but it does not matter because the work is a fantasy. Soulless rational beings coexisting with souled rational beings is a fictional premise just as much as merpeople and revolving images.
This fantasy does not have to be set in a parallel universe because the idea is that, as in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series, Faerie withdrew from Earth in historical times so it should be completely gone by the time the novel is written.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteThe bishop of Viborg and his archdeacon (to say nothing of Dante in Italy) would be examples of the kind of educated Catholics Anderson had in mind. I recall the bishop being inclined to be tolerant of that naive, semi-pagan mythology many of his people still believed. Let them be weaned away from such beliefs over time with better instruction.
Ad astra! Sean
Most Christians in medieval Europe were illiterate peasants. They got their theology from sermons and from images seen in churches, and from the stories "everybody knew".
ReplyDeleteIt was necessarily very different from a philosopher's concepts.
Kaor, Stirling!
ReplyDeleteI agree, hence things like the Stations of the Cross depicting the Passion of Christ that you see in Catholic churches. The Prologue of Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES describes a devoted parish priest who did all these things (homilies and explanations).
Ad astra! Sean