Sunday, June 12, 2005

Book Exchanges

Reading Priest and Parish in Eighteenth Century France by Timothy Tackett today. Quite a nice introduction to the subject. Sometimes, I think I would have liked to be a parish priest (Or a curé in France) back then. Many of them spent all but a few hours a day studying topics like Latin or botany. Quite relaxing really. A surprising amount held fairly typical Enlightenment ideas on just about everything except the Church. Besides, we're foolish to think that science and religion are mutually exclusive. Reading the Bible on four levels simultaneously trains the mind to avoid such limited thinking. Is the book literal truth, metaphor, morality or mysticism? Is the world? Yes.

I liked: “Indeed (Chaix’s) personal observations of the inner structures of plant life seemed further evidence of the glory and wisdom of God.”

I also liked the fact that many priests shared their books with professors around the world via "book exchange". They would simply mail rare books to their circle of friends and pass them along like a chain letter. How many people have relied on gift exchanges throughout history! And how bizarre of us to develop concepts like "intellectual property"!

4 comments:

daisy said...

Ah, but have you read The Scapegoat?

Rufus said...

Ooh, no! What happens?


BTW- I can never leave messages on I Have a Damn Snake. I can leave them everywhere else, but there. Don't know why. But, I do read it.

daisy said...

Really? What happens when you try to comment on my site?

In The Scapegoat, the curé, a minor but sort of disgusting character, spends most of his waking hours administering morphine to an addicted old biddy.

Rufus said...

I click "comment" and nothing pops up. I try "Open in new window" and nothing happens. Then I cry. It may well be our crappy computer. Just wanted you to know that I read it regularly.

Ah, the nefarious curé is a classic character in French literature. There are plenty of great 18th century pornographic novels about parish priests who are thieving, buggering, evil bastards.