The following is from the book I am presently reading in snatches when downloading large files during the day. ["God and Money: Florence and the Medici in the Renaissance", Richard Freemantle, Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1992]
One of the complaints of the critics of the Roman Catholic Church in the medieval ages was not only that the layman shold be allowed to interpret the scriptures in his own way, but also that the Church was coddling and actually encouraging a tranche of the people to be poor in order to create a greater dependency on it: <<<< For centuries every European's vision of life was filled with Christian objects, Christian rituals, Christian laws. Christianity wasn't just a religion. For over a thousand years -- from about 300AD until after 1300AD -- it was the one universal government in Europe. It had a central bureaucracy in Rome, an organization with priests and churches spread to every village and hamlet in Europe, and its own universal language, Latin. The Church oversaw birth, education, marriage or holy orders, all professional activity, children, sickness, old age, death, burial, and of course, in general, society's morals. All the things that the State does today, the Church did then. Regardless of who was the local ruler, or what language he spoke, Europe's one enduring government was the Christian Church with its centre at Rome. >>>> Rings a bell? It certainly does over here with a European Commission in Brussels steady encroaching into every aspect of our daily lives -- taking over and consolidating the already wide control that our centralised governments already have. In the largest countries of Europe where centralisation and control has been the greatest in the last 20 years -- France, Germany, England -- the underclass is steadily growing (about 2-3 million so far in England) for whom there is little hope or scope, especially for their young people (some of whom now comprise the third generation of their families without jobs). Keith Hudson __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
