On Tue, 14 Sep 1999, Hans Zimmerman wrote:
> > 3. The continuity of "Roma" as caput mundi in the complementarism of king and > priest, of rex and sacerdos - see "So erhielt Petrus das Kaisertum" >http://home.t-online.de/home/03581413454/otiapref.htm > - in the form of Kaiser and Papa, confirmed by the Constantine donation - a > fake, of course, but in this form best expression of the fundamental idea. > > So far, I'm d'accord with RANDI C ELDEVIK; but he [--Actually, she.] also has written some nonsense about the ordo domus St. Mariae Teutonicorum in his last letter: > > > the > > Teutonic Knights (an order of military monks)> > ? Templises (Temple-knights) and the knights of Malta (what is the English name > for this ordines?) were the prototype of this ordo. "Military monks" - is that > the common name of such knights? [--What is the problem with calling the Teutonic Knights a military order of monks? That's what they were, weren't they?] The people conquered by the ordo were the Prussians, and later also the people > living in the Balticum. Conflict with the Polish kingdom was late . . . [--I don't think Mantovano is the place to discuss late-medieval Eastern European history. But I would like to briefly note that I am not talking "nonsense". I may have skipped over a lot; certainly the Teutonic Knights were aggressors throughout a large part of the Baltic and tried to suppress a lot of indigenous cultures. But in doing so the Teutonic Knights came into conflict with the Poles, since the Polish-Lithuanian Federation had ruled vast northeastern regions (much bigger than the present-day states of Poland and Lithuania) ever since the time of Jagiello; and, in their arrogance, the Teutonic Knights tended to view the Poles themselves as "foreign" and "non-Catholic" in the same way as they viewed the neighboring peoples with whom the Poles were confederated. For my purposes, the Teutonic Knights and _all_ their activities are just another example of an arrogant approach to cultural hegemony that was all too common in Western Christianity during the Middle Ages; afterward, too. I might just as well have mentioned the example of the Spanish conquistadors who wanted to convert the Amerinds of Mexico and Central America, but who forbade Amerind converts to be ordained to the priesthood because, somehow, even after baptism and Catholic education, they were considered to be "not good enough." Sadly, the _Aeneid_ is tied in with all these various attempts at cultural hegemony: see Richard Waswo's article "The History that Literature Makes" in _New Literary History_.] Randi Eldevik (Ms.) Oklahoma State University ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
