2-1-Q for The Swerve By Greenblatt Chat. 2 “The Moment of Discovery”

2 Specific details from the text:

1.On page 37, Greenblatt describes Poggio to be someone who is really against the idea of the monastery. He states “Their whole enterprise seemed to him an exercise in hypocrisy.” All Poggio sees with these places of holy worship is a way for the church to make money, being bankrolled by the landholders of the people around them and generously funded by governments at the time. He also states that its hypocritical of them to describe what they do as laborious work while farmers just outside the monastery walls work, “exposed to the wind and rain, with bare feet, and with their bodies thinly clad,” in the fields. Poggio is practically making a commentary on the truth of the church of his time.

2. On page 38, Greenblatt describes how valued the livelihood of scribes was compared to the average citizen. He states, “In the ‘wergild’ codes that in Germanic lands and in Ireland specified the payment for reparations for murder… the loss of a scribe by violence was ranked equal to the loss of a bishop or an abbot.” This idea that being able to simply write in this time was held to such a regard as being on the same level as a bishop truly shows the power of the writer at the time. Inadvertently, this makes Poggio seem more upper class, or more worthy of class, for his invaluable skills.

1 connection:

Something I noticed that made me think of the world around me was Poggio believing the church and its monasteries to be more of an “enterprise” rather than a place of worship. It is very interesting to hear this account from a man pre-lutheran era due to the fact that questioning the church in such a way would be heretical, and yet he goes on record to talk this aloud to his fellow scribes. It just happened to remind me of the feelings some people express about the church in regards to the ways in which they seem more interested in making money than actually preaching their sermons and texts.

Questions:

How come commentary in the monasteries about the books they would discuss be limited heavily, “lest the occasion be given”, and what exactly does that pertain to? Is it just about the devil or is it something else entirely?