First of all, I have to apologize for the aggressive tone of my previous responses, and congratulate you on your unshakeable good will. I still think you are wrong, but you are also an example of proper manners. Thank you.
The accumulation of capital and the professionalization of finance took place earlier in Italy than any other Western country. Have a look at Iris Origo's The Merchant of Prato, and at the history of the house of Medici. And that means that the Church had to do with these things earlier than is normally understood. The Church has always looked askance on the power of wealth or social status in any form ("harder than to pass a camel through the eye of a needle..") and approved of corporate activity and mutual succour; indeed, she has since the beginning managed them herself. The very order of Deacons was created to manage the relief activities of the Gentile Church in a time of hunger in Jerusalem, IIRC. IN other words, the learned Thomist Leo XIII invented very little in Rerum Novarum, which is sodden with history to the point of using the word "new" in the wholly Latin sense of "sinister, strange, dangerous". He merely adapted the teachings of centuries to new circumstances.
The connection of Jews with capitalism and of both with legends of ugly little people beneath the earth is at best casual. Both Jews and stunted subterranean races have been the subject of legend - usally negative - for as long as recorded history. The Books of Tobit and of Esther show that Jew-bashing and systematic persecution were part of the landscape for centuries before Christanity, let alone Capitalism, and dwarves and wood-creatures are features of folklore wherever humans live. The first modern author to write about dangerous subterranean races was the Englishman Bulwer-Lytton, in his The coming race which I own but regret to say have not yet read. One thing I can tell you, though: not only was Bulwer-Lytton the very incarnation of Victorian self-regard with all its mercantile aspects, he also made the protagonist of his story an American. I doubt I will find any allegory against capitalism here. You are postulating a regularity of correspondence between image and political significance which simply is not there.
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Date: 2008-06-14 05:53 pm (UTC)The accumulation of capital and the professionalization of finance took place earlier in Italy than any other Western country. Have a look at Iris Origo's The Merchant of Prato, and at the history of the house of Medici. And that means that the Church had to do with these things earlier than is normally understood. The Church has always looked askance on the power of wealth or social status in any form ("harder than to pass a camel through the eye of a needle..") and approved of corporate activity and mutual succour; indeed, she has since the beginning managed them herself. The very order of Deacons was created to manage the relief activities of the Gentile Church in a time of hunger in Jerusalem, IIRC. IN other words, the learned Thomist Leo XIII invented very little in Rerum Novarum, which is sodden with history to the point of using the word "new" in the wholly Latin sense of "sinister, strange, dangerous". He merely adapted the teachings of centuries to new circumstances.
The connection of Jews with capitalism and of both with legends of ugly little people beneath the earth is at best casual. Both Jews and stunted subterranean races have been the subject of legend - usally negative - for as long as recorded history. The Books of Tobit and of Esther show that Jew-bashing and systematic persecution were part of the landscape for centuries before Christanity, let alone Capitalism, and dwarves and wood-creatures are features of folklore wherever humans live. The first modern author to write about dangerous subterranean races was the Englishman Bulwer-Lytton, in his The coming race which I own but regret to say have not yet read. One thing I can tell you, though: not only was Bulwer-Lytton the very incarnation of Victorian self-regard with all its mercantile aspects, he also made the protagonist of his story an American. I doubt I will find any allegory against capitalism here. You are postulating a regularity of correspondence between image and political significance which simply is not there.