The Historical Ponderings Society

[EverySongbirdSays]

Following on from the thread "What questions do you have about stuff from History or am I the only one?" Which is here

Ever wondered how we got from the clothes of Cave people to the clothes of today?

Who was the first person to make and eat Cheese? Or cake?

How ideas became widespread

Why the Aztecs didn't have the wheel?

Why Elizabeth I never married?

How accurate historical fiction is?

Then this your thread and we are your people.

PROCEED HISTORY LOVERS

I'm not sure that you couldn't become fed up with a particular religion but I doubt that anyone - King or commoner - would have overlooked the presence of God.

Nowadays, there's almost an assumption that people, somewhere, will have a reason for something - or are working on it. Backaways, though, so much was unknown. Even the outbreaks of Sweat must have seemed like a divine judgement. God 'disposed'. I don't think it's possible to overestimate the effect of that on many people.

"I have a vague memory that Communion was important eg the later French kings wouldn't go to Communion if they were having 'sinful relations'."

You can only receive communion if you've confessed since your last mortal sin and you can't confess with the intention of continuing to commit that sin

brilliant thanks for the horse info. I knew there's be a lot, but not quite that many. It still feels like half the population was just milling around in the early hours just waiting to stumble across a dead body. There was one "witness" who reported not hearing any noise from a murderee in the same lodging house, who said her kitten woke her up at 5am so she popped to the pub for some rum! I know it was near Covent Garden so presumably pubs open early for market traders, but did no-one sleep back then?!!

My kitten woke me up so I went for an early-morning rum

A likely story.

Ah. Thanks, tabular. Although it rather begs the moral question about the penalties for continuing to commit mortal sins.

Sorry. tabulah.

(Autocorrect wins again. )

Well there aren't any as long as you don't die before confessing or at least gaining perfect contrition...though not taking part in communion is a penalty of sorts.

Though of course people will know you're not taking communion and that kind of leads to knowing why and social repercussions.

So people - i.e. Kings and their courts in particular - could continue to 'sin' as long as they had a good confession in mind somewhere down the road?

Yes.

My granny was a Spanish Catholic who ran off and married a divorced English man (my grandad).

When she was dying - she confessed.

She'd attended mass for 45 years, never confessing, never taking communion, raised the children as Catholics and everything, but living in mortal sin (in her view) that whole time and only confessing when she was on her death bed as obviously at that point she wasn't planning on commiting that sin anymore.

Not quite the same someone confessing in between affairs and quite sad really that she thought she was going to hell unless she confessed to something that in the meantime became not a sin for everyone else.

But yes, it's what state you die in that matters, even planning to confess but not making it can be enough to save your soul.

Thanks, tabulah. That's a massive insight, there. For me at any rate.

Yeah, Protestants don't have any fun when they're alive, Catholics have lots of fun and plan to confess it all on their death bed

I think the kitten / rum JtheR woman would have been a MNer if she had been born later

"Yeah, Protestants don't have any fun when they're alive, Catholics have lots of fun and plan to confess it all on their death bed"

Lol...and weirdly the least fun loving Protestant churches tend to be the ones who believe that God has already picked who goes to heaven or hell and you can't change that by sinning or not.

Tabulah, that does make it a lot clearer thank you!

Further ponderings on what on earth Victorians did with all those dead horses led to the following discoveries.
There was some sort of ordnance restricting horse slaughtering hours, which explains nocturnal knacker men.
One establishment in Wandsworth slaughtered 26000 a year (but seem to have been a 24 hour operation) and there were about 30 such businesses.
Horses were made into fertiliser, buttons, candles, carriage roofs, whips, German cavalry trousers and by far the biggest category, cat meat. Cat meat vendors lined up with old prams and hand carts and loaded up little horse kebabs threaded on wooden skewers and big lumps of cooked horse and set off on their rounds. There were around 300 000 cats and some customers bought up to 14lb meat a day. A horse yielded around 2cwt meat. This leads me to conclude that either
a) Victorian domestic cats were a lot bigger than today ( explaining requirement for shot of rum if woken by one in the early hours).
B) the Victorian rodent problem was so bad people kept large herds of cats
Or
c) poor Victorians ate a lot of horse and pretended it was for the cat

The whole equine history of the UK (and the world) is fascinating (and has portents for our own times).

In less than a generation we saw the horse-based transport infrastructure swept away to be replaced by the motor car. And when you start to think about the network of professions that had been built on horse transport ... breeders, vets, trainers, farriers, blacksmiths ... plus the network for selling and buying. Then the associated industries - coachbuilding, saddlemaking ...

All gone.

Of course the village blacksmith become the local mechanic. The coachbuilders built cars bodys ...

Catholics have lots of fun and plan to confess it all on their death bed

I don't know about fun, as there's always that dark cloud of guilt.

Dear Goodness.

If the king wanted an affair with you, you'd generally do well out of it. Courtesan (though I don't think the word was used) was pretty much the best career choice for an aristocratic, beautiful and intelligent woman. More so in France though.

But you'd be showered in valuable gifts that you could sell later, possibly including a home, increased social status for you and your family, your family would be in royal favour so they'd benefit too - better posts in the household etc, and any children would be recognised and be a source of income too.

Riskier if you're unmarried, since you wouldn't be able to bring virginity to your eventual marriage, but some husbands seemed pretty complacent about it. In that programme LC says Henry VIII essentially paid Mary Seymour's husband for her!

I am not Catholic & never really understood confession. I thought the whole point was to prevent you sinning in the first place, not give you a free pass to do what you want, as long as you say you're sorry afterwards?

That's why I used the word 'insight', Saag. It may (or may not) be a moral disaster area but if people backaways could persuade themselves that that was 'the way it worked' then it might go some way to aiding understanding of their actions.

I thought the whole point was to prevent you sinning in the first place, not give you a free pass to do what you want, as long as you say you're sorry afterwards?

It's not supposed to be a free pass. :)
You're supposed to intend not to sin again. Which is why the grandmother in the story didn't confess while she had the intention of sinning.

It's not supposed to be a free pass or really to stop you sinning...it's more about knowing you can repent for anything you do and God will forgive you.

But people are people so they take advantage and it can become a bit of a free pass in some situations - though you are supposed to really repent, not just go through the motions.

My granny married my grandad despite believing it was a sin, clearly felt guilt about it all those years and when she was dying wanted to repent. It's a bit of a drawn out example because she spent decades married to him, but there was a bit of her that was never entirely ok with the fact their marriage wasn't in her eyes a valid one.

Not enough to not do it mind, but she was a pretty headstrong woman, lol.

It certainly puts perspective on the secession from Rome that was engineered during the reign of Henry VIII. The responsibility that Henry was taking to himself. (There was a great deal of money involved but it still wasn't a straightforward set of actions.)

It's huge, what he did, I'm not a historian - I'm just interested, but I have a religious studies degree.

He set himself up as the head of the church, the pope is effectively Jesus' representative on earth, the successor of St. Peter and Henry sets up the English crown (himself) to be that instead and there's not even any pretence that it should have always been that way, he just grants himself that status. (Not alone obviously)

That's a massive thing, the politics, the money and all the big historical events that directly lead from it often overshadow quite what a big deal that is.

It was huge. Often overshadowed by other events but you can half imagine what the ordinary folk must have felt about it. Half imagine.