(blocked) asks:
> Can you please give me any insight on this book?
> PS, What was Jason Carter's reaction to his character being
> killed off?

Kathryn's the big fan of Marcus Aurelius, though I'm familiar
with his work. I can't recall offhand which part she was referring to,
though, but will ask. (She tends to quote him to me all the time...I
think she's working on my moral and ethical development.)

jms

(blocked) asks:
> is a good example?

Actually, I was watching a debate on PBS a few weeks ago, and
they made the point that Christianity may have been the *cause* of the
fall of the Roman Empire, rather than its saving grace...apparently it
began to take the church structure as its own model in how to operate
(when its own infrastructure began to collapse), and put religious
leaders into positions they should never have occupied for reasons of
simple incompetence, and in short order things began to fall apart.

I wish I could've made that paragraph more sensible, but I was
writing while listening, and I only got the sense of it...perhaps
someone else out there who heard it can fill in the gaps, but that's
the gist of the idea.

jms

(blocked) asks:
> Have you read Elaine Pagels book, "The Gnostic Gospels?"

That's an odd perspective since so much of Medeival christianity
ran on money...pilgrims providing a constant stream of money to various
churches and shrines to saints, leading to competitions between
shrines, and (of all things) the "sub-letting" of shrines by taking the
bones of saint A and sending on bone to shrine B, another to shrine C,
and generating money in those regions. And of course the buying of
spiritual favors, patrons, the rich folk sending others to do penance
for them...it was all about money.

(Source: Finucane's MIRACLES AND PILGRIMS, a fascinating book,
btw.)

Interesting aside...for the last 6-8 months, I've been doing a
fair amount of research into medieval England, especially the medieval
church, for a play I'm writing (which may become a novel if I'm not
careful). Dumped several hundred dollars on a massive order from
Amazon.com back a few months ago to fill out what I needed. That was
what tangentially led me into the post-Burn sequence in
"Deconstruction." My brain has been full of monks for the last 8
months or so, and knowing the role they played in maintaining secular
knowledge from about 500 AD and for some time thereafter, that seemed
the perfect route to go that would also resonate with the look of the
Rangers and the religious caste Minbari and the whole feel we were
setting up.

It was only when I was about halfway into the act that I
thought, "Oh, crud, this is the same area Canticle explored." And for
several days I set it aside and strongly considered dropping it, or
changing the venue (at one point considered setting it in the ruins of
a university, but I couldn't make that work realistically...who'd be
supporting a university in the ruins of a major nuclear war? Who'd
have the *resources* I needed? The church, or what would at least LOOK
like the church. My sense of backstory here is that the Anla-shok
moved in and started little "abbeys" all over the place, using the
church as cover, but rarely actually a part of it, which was why they
had not gotten their recognition, and would never get it. Rome
probably didn't even know about them, or knew them only distantly.)

Anyway...at the end of the day, I decided to leave it as it was,
since I'd gotten there on an independent road, we'd already had a
number of monks on B5, and there's been a LOT of theocratic science
fiction written beyond Canticle...Gather Darkness, aspects of
Foundation, others.

jms

(blocked) asks:
> What period is the book you just cited about?
> I'd bet it was from Roncesvalles (sp?) to the Rennaisance, or
> maybe 1000 to 1500? In your reading about medieval England, did
> you get Georges Duby's "William the Marshall?"

You're correct; the part where the money got to be bigtime for
the church was in the 13th-15th centuries. That was where the saint
business went bigtime, to the point where the church bosses had to
start hammering the local branches where the saints were getting too
powerful, and began creating challenges to the main line of authority.

I love the competition that broke out among them...some saying
that their saint was better at miracles than the one down the road, and
if you're stupid enough to *go* to the one down the road, why, things
could actually get worse for you....

jms

{original post had no questions}

"Neroon's description of it "We fight, they work, you pray." was
lifted whole from the church's description of proper societal roles.
You took it word for word (which I assume was the intention)."

Actually...no, I wasn't even aware of that until you mentioned
it just now. But I can see how it would fit.

jms

(blocked) asks:
> Jeff Sigh Corps - Pat Tallman Division Great Maker huh?

"Personally, I'm quite amazed that he and the rest of the cast were
able to keep themselves from spouting off on the last day in
Blackpool."

More or less. I was talking to Julie Caitlin Brown the other
day, who commented that she saw Bruce shortly after learning of
Claudia's decision, and he was upset, angry, nearly in tears over the
whole thing. A lot of people in the cast were very upset over her
decision.

jms

{original post had no questions}

"The fight work pray cycle representing Knights, Serfs and Clergy and
written *word for word* as Neroon said it is about *eight hundred*
years old. I'll see if I can dig up an exact reference. I was certain
you cribbed it from the Dominicans."

Nope...though the knights/serfs/clergy thing makes sense in that
context of work/serve/pray. It's also warrior/worker/religious caste.
It just kinda made sense when I thought it up.

So now I have to figure out if I'm ahead of my time or behind my
time....

jms

{original post had no questions}

No, he didn't set up the castes, but he did come up with a
better way for them to work together constructively. And yeah, that
model would fit.

jms