Paul Bryant's Reviews > The Medieval Papacy

The Medieval Papacy by Geoffrey Barraclough
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bookshelves: history-will-teach-us-nothing

A review in honour of the new Pontiff Pope Francis.... and to let him know, if he needs any reminder, that no matter how much the Catholic church looks a bit ragged and corrupt now, it ain't nothing compared to what it was way back when.

Yes, you do have cardinals who have spent their lives gay-bashing and who - shock horror - turn out to be gay themselves.

Yes you do have creepy paedos too.

But you DON'T have two separate Popes excommunicating each other like in some kind of computer game VIOLENT POPES - it's Urban VI vs Clement VII - BLAPPP! You're toast, Urban! Yah, Clement, eat your blasphemous eucharist and die......ZZZAZZZZPP!

I remember my friends mocking me for reading this book some years ago, but it was quite an exciting story.
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Reading Progress

Finished Reading
March 15, 2013 – Shelved
March 15, 2013 – Shelved as: history-will-teach-us-nothing

Comments Showing 1-11 of 11 (11 new)

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message 1: by Karen· (last edited Mar 15, 2013 12:43PM) (new)

Karen· Ha! At last someone sees this my way. All the blah blah in the media about which popy yopi can steer the church through this time of crisis... CRISIS? A bit of money laundering and paedophilia and gay-closeting? But it was ever thus!!! And worse!!!! They used to lock women away for having a baby out of wedlock (up to 1996). They used to burn people at the stake. Where's the crisis? What's going on now is business as usual.


message 2: by Paul (last edited Mar 15, 2013 12:48PM) (new) - rated it 3 stars

Paul Bryant This came up (not the papacy, the idea of things getting worse in general) in SP's review of this interesting george Saunders collection -

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

great review but SP thinks, like GS, that the world's going all to hell, and actually, I think things are getting better...! We debate that in the comments thread.


message 3: by Karen· (new)

Karen· Oh right. Ta. Sorry to be so boring unoriginal. (Don't worry, I'll get over it - whisky helps).


Paul Bryant Oh my, sorry for the brusque tone - I should have said I am glad that you are so sympatico with this unfashionable point of view! In fact i have just been reading the reviews of Stephen Pinker's vast tome on this very subject - ain't going to be reading that any time soon - but goodreaders HATE his argument (that global violence is decreasing). It's almost not worth arguing it. Anyway, i clink a glass in your direction , except I can't really as I'm still at work.


message 5: by Karen· (last edited Mar 15, 2013 01:40PM) (new)

Karen· At the risk of this turning into a no-my-bad-fest: you were not brusque, sir. No prob. This internetty thing misses the tone and the raised eyebrows and all those other signals. Wink wink.

And I do agree. Don't all the statistics back us up? Even the ones we haven't made up ourselves? I thought the murder rate was well on its way down, and the crime rate generally too. Thirty Year Wars are now Nine Day Wars - surely that's an improvement?

Maybe you can raise a glass later - Sláinte!


Paul Bryant All old persons like to moan on about a golden age which happens to co-incide with their youth. So this is just part of the old-bastard narrative. There's also a vast understandable resentment of the state of the world - where is the glittery future we were implicitly promised? Where is my jet pack? My holiday on the moon? Why are we still moaning on about housing shortages and bankers' bonuses and general crapness when it's 2013 which is demonstrably the future? So there's that too. People do not wish to believe that in spite of everything, things are actually better than they ever were.


message 7: by Karen· (new)

Karen· Aye, there's that, and as you mentioned in the comments on spenk's review, the media flooding all these 'human interest' stories into our homes so we end up thinking we'll be murdered in our beds.

Plus on top of that, it so happens that we live in highly individualistic societies, and every now and again people wonder if there shouldn't be a slight corrective to that way of thinking. Perhaps. It may have gone just a leetle too far, emphasis on personal achievement turning into blatant selfishness. But that's a bit like the 19th century bringing up their girls to be sideboard ornaments and then moaning about their frivolity.


Paul Bryant By the way, now may be the time to write that drunken book review which is such a noble Goodreads tradition - say, in three hours or so? Cheers!

(Never let it be said that I don't encourage bad behaviour wherever possible. I fear I am more influenced by the Medieval popes that I had thought.)


message 9: by Karen· (new)

Karen· If writing drunken book reviews at GR is your idea of bad behaviour, then your life is much quieter than I ever imagined....


message 10: by Kris (new)

Kris Paul, your review brought this book to mind: The Bad Popes. :)


message 11: by Paul (new) - rated it 3 stars

Paul Bryant Hadn't heard of that one, it looks hilarious in a fustian kind of way.


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