This is an attempt to move an online debate on my LJ

[fpb]

The Cuckoo: your dogma has no bearing whatever on historical fact, of which you are woefully ignorant. The sad thing is the cheerful confidence with which you retail the same old legends. For instance, the vast majority of early churches was built well away from pagan sites. You may have some fourth-hand notion of Gregory I's libellus responsorum to Augustine of Canterbury, allowing him to take over and adapt local rituals; but the fools who long ago added that item to the usual roster of rationalist cliches did not realize that Gregory meant that permission as an exception. IN point of fact, the transformation of pagan holy places into Christian churches is so rare, even in England (which is what Gregory was speaking about), that a special place-name for this kind of site was invented: Harrow (hence Harrow-on-the-Hill and so on). Apart from anything else, pagan temples in general did not meet the needs of Christian churches, such as meeting halls able to hold hundreds of faithful and burial areas in the immediate proximity. (Pagans always buried their dead outside the city walls, and never in sight of a temple.)

In short, I would tell you not to talk of what you don't know, but the trouble is that your situation is worse: you are ignorant and think you know.

Comments

[filialucis]

I would be avid for the background of this post. May I ask where the debate originated that you're trying to move here?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It's on the Biased BBC blog, which unfortunately is rather hard to itemize. It is in the answers thread to the most recent open thread post.

[filialucis]

Found it. Thanks!

[filialucis]

Would be nice if your cuckoo could at least spell the names of the authors he quotes. :D

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It says something about him that he takes Wikipedia to be authoritative. Useful, yes; authoritative, no.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

As a historian, I have often found that the worst problems come not from the things that we don't know, but from the things everybody knows, that are dead wrong. Errors that have been repeated so many times they have attained a patina of authority which can be almost impossible to dislodge with facts.

And it's not just the "common herd" that fall prey to these -- there have been noted cases in which one erroneous statement has been cited by so many scholars, who were subsequently cited by other scholars, that subsequently uprooting the error became a major undertaking, and even reputable scholars would resist tooth and toenail.

And don't even get me started about the problem of commonly-held fallacies and fiction writing. You simply can't fight what Everybody Knows in fiction -- it's either bow to it or sidestep it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a fellow historian, I have only two things to say:
HEAR HEAR!
And,
Shake!

By the way...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

...having had a look at your profile page, I think you might find this post interesting: http://fpb.livejournal.com/85603.html.

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

Pagans always buried their dead outside the city walls, and never in sight of a temple.

Out of pure curiosity: that's about Britain's/European/which parts of Europe's pagans?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That's about Greeks and Romans. It is a generalization, but we should remember in which culture the Church was incubated

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

Generalizations are okay, as long as we know what we are talking about :)