[Comments] Matrix by Lauren Groff

[Wynamoinen]

Originally Posted by Lemming23

*named after the medieval Arab mathematician Al-Geber (Jabir ibn-Hayyan), and also the root of the word algebra. Bonus trivia nonsense!

I had understood that algebra came from al-jabr, meaning “reunion of broken parts.” Ie, not from a proper name.

Sorry that I'm not keeping up with the book club this time around. I'm watching the thread, and I put the book on my to-read list. But I have other things that I need to read, and I don't read frequently or quickly enough to both keep up with book club and my other interests/necessities. So I need to pass here on occasion. Unfortunate that after two sausage fest books, I'm missing the text that actually has substantial women's perspective in it.

[Sprite]

I have a sticker that confirms I climbed the tower at Durham Cathedral

In Matrix it was interesting how Marie gradually transforms the convent from a few starving nuns to a thriving and prosperous community, modeling herself after the queen, with parallels between their positions and influence. It seems that many of the changes Marie implements during her lifetime go against convention, from utilizing the best skills of each woman, to building a labyrinth to protect them, to even taking on priestly duties (mass and confession) herself - the last in particular I'm guessing would have been heretical?

A monastery/convent definitely holds inspiration for fantasy settings, especially for certain backgrounds, though once magic and magical healing are part of the setting, some realistic aspects of medieval life go away (thankfully).
DM: Okay, you complete a long rest at the inn. Roll to check if you die of infection because you scratch an insect bite. Roll to check if you die of dysentery because your drinking water was not boiled. Roll to check if you caught syphilis from your paid evening's company...

[lostcheerio]

I climbed the tower at Durham Cathedral too, but so many many years ago! I think 1988?! I don't remember stickers but I remember being enchanted by the place. Coming from a Protestant background, more specifically from a denomination where iconography was shunned, it was my first time to really get the whole "awe" thing inside a church, way before I got to Chartres or the Vatican.

I ran my abbey-based one-shot at a table for the first time, and it went great! I was kinda making it up on the fly around a core idea, and racing through a 4 hour deadline, but in the written version I hope to include many more details inspired by the book and my reading/listening around the topic. Yay!

Lemming, in my one-shot I have monks and nuns both living there, but in different parts of the campus. Would that ever happen?

[DeletedUser79558]

Originally Posted by lostcheerio

Lemming, in my one-shot I have monks and nuns both living there, but in different parts of the campus. Would that ever happen?

They're usually known as double houses; basically they're two monasteries next to each other, divided by walls. There's usually a prior in charge of the men's side, and a prioress or abbess in control of the women's side, with the prioress in charge of the whole, but there are exceptions - with the Gilbertine double houses, the founder (Gilbert of Sempringham) was in charge at Sempringham itself, and it seems that the canons attached to double houses had more say in the running there than the prioresses in general. A lot of that came after Gilbert's death though, then various men led the order (with the new title of master of the order), and a definite move focus more on recruiting men (I think there was one new double house founded after Gilbert's death, and about a dozen male-only houses).

But aside from that, usually there'd be high walls surrounding the women's monastery, and sometimes the only entrance within was through the men's monastery (otherwise they'd have their own entrance, particularly if they had servants coming and going). Contact between the two groups would be highly limited, often consisting of either a door (to which only the priors / prioresses would have access), or in some cases a revolving window through which things could be passed.

They were very much an English / Celtic thing, appearing mostly in the early medieval period, and revived by Gilbert of Sempringham, but not often found in continental Europe; at one point they were banned because of the fear of intermingling between the sexes. One of the big scandals of the Gilbertine order was when a nun got pregnant by either a laybrother or canon of the order.

EDIT: Here's a floorplan of Watton priory (another Gilbertine house, and where the pregnant nun was based):

[lostcheerio]

Pushing on with Matrix! Who's done?

[bothers]

Me! I enjoyed it. Found Marie's (half-hearted, lets be real) struggle against the sin of pride to be a very interesting thread pulling us through her life.

I hadn't realised that Groff is American, I was sure she must be English. The only thing that gave her away for me was one of the early chapters where Marie was watching a hummingbird somewhere. The illusion of Englishness was so strong I actually started googling to work out if maybe that chapter was set in France, and maybe France has hummingbirds and I just don't know how Europe works? It does not. Ubiquitous in America, but entirely absent in Europe, even in ye olden dayes. But very convincing writing.

[DeletedUser79558]

I finished it too! And yeah, a little bit of megalomania in Marie, I think. It takes something to declare that you're able to conduct mass as a woman, and to countermand a papal order for anathema.

[Sprite]

It was a good read.

I was also bumped from the story by the appearance of that hummingbird - surprised that got past editors.

Conducting mass seemed like the most risky thing Marie did. I wondered why nobody in the church noticed that suddenly a weekly visit from a priest was no longer needed.

It was an interesting twist that the new abbess burns all of Marie's journals at the end. So as a reader, I am free to suspend all disbelief.

[lostcheerio]

Ok question time for our religion experts!

I know that it has been firmly asserted and re-asserted in contemporary times that women in the Catholic church cannot be ordained as priests or deacons. BUT! It seems like women, and abbesses in particular have been pushing that line, doing stuff that lay-people aren't supposed to do, since the middle ages... is that historically rooted? And did they change it so lay-people (and women) could do stuff like speak on the word and distribute communion and such, "when necessary" more as like pragmatism than progress? (I mean, sometimes pragmatism pushes progress, right?) Do you think that women will ever be able to be priests? Is the church itself referred to commonly with a female pronoun?

Also I want to <--- I typed this, and then had to get up and do something else, and when I sat down again, I forgot. So, maybe I'll remember what that was going to be!

[lostcheerio]

I remembered:

I want to post this link -- I haven't listened to it yet but it's a podcast interview with Groff.

[Sprite]

Many religious orders that did not traditionally allow women to hold a pastoral position, do now. I grew up in the Episcopal/Anglican church, and I distinctly remember when women were first allowed to be ordained. It was a huge deal.

[DeletedUser79558]

Originally Posted by Sprite

Conducting mass seemed like the most risky thing Marie did. I wondered why nobody in the church noticed that suddenly a weekly visit from a priest was no longer needed.

Monasteries usually brought in a parish priest from outside, from one of the local villages - it would be fairly easy for the other local priests to assume that one of the others nearby was providing such a service, and no-one higher up in the church would be particularly concerned with events at the local level. The bigger question is why everyone in the monastery would go along with it, including all the servants, and especially when anathema had been declared in England.

[DeletedUser79558]

Originally Posted by lostcheerio

Ok question time for our religion experts!

I know that it has been firmly asserted and re-asserted in contemporary times that women in the Catholic church cannot be ordained as priests or deacons. BUT! It seems like women, and abbesses in particular have been pushing that line, doing stuff that lay-people aren't supposed to do, since the middle ages... is that historically rooted? And did they change it so lay-people (and women) could do stuff like speak on the word and distribute communion and such, "when necessary" more as like pragmatism than progress? (I mean, sometimes pragmatism pushes progress, right?) Do you think that women will ever be able to be priests? Is the church itself referred to commonly with a female pronoun?

Despite the sometimes monolithic nature of the church in the Middle Ages, it wasn't entirely so, and some things did change. Some of the main rites were given over to lay people (baptism, for example, which could lead to trouble later when people were "baptising" Jews by sprinkling water on them and then claiming them as crypto-Jews, and marriage, which didn't require a priest, just the willingness to stand in public and declare that you were now married (and which went hand in hand with the notion of saying "I do" rather than "I will", which allowed some scurrilous types to consummate the "marriage" and then declare that their future promise to marry (because they said "I will") was null and void on the grounds that their "future" spouse was not a virgin, though she had believed that it had been legitimate), and in fact baptism could even be done by non-christians if necessary (though not by heretics), since with medicine being one of the options open to Jews, there was a chance that the person delivering your child would be one; with complications of childbirth, a quick baptism to ensure a baby that wasn't going to make it still got to enter heaven could be done without having to have any priests on hand.

I'm not sure how much pragmatism played a role other than that though - especially where such things as mass and confession stood - hence the hoped-for devastating effect of anathema, where neither could be performed. On the subject of preaching, that was something that was the preserve of the church (those learned in theology could preach, but others weren't allowed, since they might not have a proper and thorough grasp of the subject at hand, at least in theory - though in many cases the followers of those mentioned below had a good, if not better grasp of the Bible than some priests had). It's how Peter Waldo (founder of the Waldensians) came to grief, due to his lay preaching (that brought him to the attention of the church; when he stepped it up and decided that he'd provide a bible in vernacular languages rather than the Latin Vulgate, he really sped up the fall into heresy). It's interesting that the Waldensians were condemned as heretics in the same period (late 12th / early 13th C) as the Franciscans and other mendicant orders rose, despite them being very similar in outlook, based on apostolic preaching and asceticism. There's very little difference between the early stories of Waldo and Francis, and it's important to note that while Francis was accepted by the church, his mendicant order changed quite drastically after his death, and the Franciscans who tried to stick rigorously to his teachings ended up being castigated as heretics themselves (the Spiritual Franciscans).

As to the future...I think at some stage, women priests are going to be allowed in the Catholic church (as they are in many protestant churches), if for nothing else than lack of men taking up the role, though there'll be tremendous fights and a possible schism when they do. There are some complaints in the church concerning the lack of "local" priests (for which read "white") and a larger dependence on African priests in particular in parts of Europe to make up the shortfall. It's hard to say though; the people complaining about non-white priests are also those likely to complain about women priests too. And yes, the church is mother church (ecclesia has a feminine ending); in the same way that nuns symbolically marry Jesus, catholic priests marry the church according to some theologians. To be honest, I think we're more likely to see married priests before female priests in the church, since there are already some exemptions, and that might bring back some (white) priests which might satisfy the slightly-less-than-arch-traditionalists.

Also I want to <--- I typed this, and then had to get up and do something else, and when I sat down again, I forgot. So, maybe I'll remember what that was going to be!

I see someone is in danger of falling off the porch again...

[Fillyjonk]

We need an award for MOST VALUABLE LEMMING and it goes to Lemming. Your expertise was invaluable and opened the book up for me in SUCH cool ways.

Welcome to MAY! Our new selection is HERE

[DeletedUser79558]

Originally Posted by Fillyjonk

We need an award for MOST VALUABLE LEMMING and it goes to Lemming. Your expertise was invaluabel and opened the book up for me in SUCH cool ways.

Thank you! I hope that I didn't go on too long, or too boringly (is a word), though I'm also aware that I barely scratched the surface. When I learned classical and medieval Latin, I re-read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, which has always been my favourite of his books. For those who haven't read it, there are quite a few Latin sections in there that are roughly translated or paraphrased, but being able to actually read them and understand them opened that book up to me in a remarkably new way that made me fall in love with it all over again. If I helped to do the same for Matrix for those who read it at even a thousandth of what I felt on my re-reading of Eco, than I'll be pleased with a job well done. Thank you for putting up with me.

Welcome to MAY! Our new selection is HERE

I was just about to ask if we'd started the new thread and book yet.