Bulletin Vol II, 2004: Continued

Our Summer 2004 issue of the Santa Catalina Bulletin explores indepth the year-long Hildegard Project, as illustrated by some of the student-created illuminated manuscripts above. Also noted in this issue of the Bulletin, and continued below, is the visit of Drs. Herzman and Cook to our campus.

Dr. Ron Herzman
Helping English redeem its place as the dominant language in England was at least one of the reasons Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales, according to Dr. Ron Herzman, speaking to Gerry Kapolka's English students on January 7.

J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings , who taught English language and literature from its earliest period, complained that the Norman Conquest in 1066 "pained him as if it had happened yesterday," Dr. Herzman told the students. The reason, Dr. Herzman said, was that French then became the official language of England. At the same time, he noted, Latin remained the language of the Church: Masses were said in Latin, and theological and philosophical works were written in Latin. Over time, only the lower, uneducated classes used English.

In subsequent centuries, Chaucer was among the writers who tried to make the case for English being restored to its rightful place. "Chaucer was the guy before anybody else who made it respectable to write in English once again," Dr. Herzman said. But in order to do so, Chaucer had to show that English was as robust, as sophisticated, and as supple as French and Latin. "Chaucer wanted a larger audience, and there simply were more English speakers around than anybody else," Dr. Herzman said.

Using "The Nun's Priest Tale" as his example, Dr. Herzman pointed to a brief passage in Latin in the beast fable, a genre that is usually directed at children but in this case was used to construct one of Chaucer's most complicated and sophisticated tales-a kind of allegory for English itself. "It's funny enough when chickens speak English," Dr. Herzman quipped. "It's even funnier when chickens speak Latin."

In the tale, Chanticleer and his wife, Pertelote, debate about whether or not dreams have meaning. Chanticleer wants to win the debate to reestablish his authority as a rooster, so he quotes Latin to Pertelote in order to sound as authoritative as possible. Then Chanticleer realizes that if he wants to have his way with Pertelote, he must flatter her. So he mistranslates the Latin in order to serve his own end, flattering Pertelote into submission. In writing this tale, Dr. Herzman told the students, Chaucer may have been commenting that one problem with Latin is that along with being used as a means of communication, it also can be used as a weapon.

As the tale continues, the fox in turn lulls Chanticleer to his near doom by using flattery, giving an interesting twist to the story: Someone who is so good at flattering his wife doesn't realize when the same device is used on him.

"These fables are supposed to have a moral," Dr. Herzman reminded the students, leading them to think about the meaning of Chaucer's tale. A student volunteered one possible moral: that language can be used either to help or to harm. Another possible moral, Dr. Herzman said, is that if you misuse language, you are liable to self-deception. An additional moral, he said, might be that one's level in society shouldn't be based on what language one speaks.

"What Chaucer is trying to do is to convince the upper classes that they would do better without the obfuscations of Latin and French and that they should speak English," Dr. Herzman said. The way to accomplish that, he said, was for people to incorporate the best from Latin and French into English.

Dr. Herzman, a distinguished teaching professor at the State University of New York-Geneseo, also spoke to history and religious studies students during this visit-his sixth-to Santa Catalina.


Dr. Bill Cook
Historians can make a case for almost any event being a turning point, according to Dr. Bill Cook, a distinguished teaching professor at the State University of New York-Geneseo. But when he lectured at Santa Catalina on February 13, he chose to highlight the fourth century as an important transition period both for the Roman Empire and for Christianity.

It was a time, Dr. Cook said, when the empire was carved into smaller, more manageable units, and when Christianity began to grow from a persecuted minority religion into the state-sanctioned religion of the majority. Setting a loose definition of the century, he told Doug Lumsden's freshman history students that the era could be seen to begin in 284 A.D., when Diocletian became emperor, and to stretch to about 410 A.D., when the Goths sacked Rome.

Diocletian's most pressing concern, Dr. Cook said, was staying alive, because nearly 100 different people had at least claimed to be emperor during the previous 100 years-making the average reign only about one year. Diocletian survived to rule for 20 years and then to retire to the Balkans. His major goal was to divide the empire into smaller units with subordinate emperors. He planned to have the "junior emperor" move up to take his place when he retired, but the plan didn't work, and another round of civil strife followed.

When Constantine emerged as supreme ruler, Dr. Cook said, he decided that the eastern portion of the empire needed an equivalent to Rome, so he built his new capital at Constantinople (modern Istanbul). "What we see is the beginning of drawing lines between east and west," Dr. Cook said. "Their stories get more and more different by the end of the century." In subsequent reigns, strong eastern emperors neglected administration of the western empire, which, in the hands of weak leaders, slowly began to wither and disintegrate.

The Goths wandered into Italy in the early days of the fifth century. In 410, after living in security for 800 years, Rome was sacked for three days, discovering that it was not invincible. Dr. Cook compared the event to September 11, 2001, saying that, like 9/11, it created "a vulnerability that nothing can erase." By the end of the fifth century, he said, there no longer was a western empire. But the eastern Roman Empire-the Byzantine Empire-lasted 1,000 years, ending only in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.

Religion also was changing, Dr. Cook said. At the beginning of the fourth century, when Diocletian became emperor, only about 10 percent of those living in the Roman Empire defined themselves as Christians. Many of the most important Christian saints died during the era, after Diocletian decreed that Christians must give up their books and make a sacrifice to the pagan gods. But with the conversion of Constantine at the end of the century, a dramatic shift took place.

"If you were one of those willing to die," Dr. Cook asked the students, "how would you feel about this leader of yours who survived?" From the cauldron, two opposing views of the Church emerged, he said. On the one side were those who believed that to join the Church, you should be so committed that you were prepared to die, and that the Church should consist only of those few, dedicated souls who were on their way to heaven. On the other side were those who believed that the Church should be a mixture of all kinds of people and that God would sort them out.

"That argument still goes on today," Dr. Cook told the students. But he pointed out that, obviously, the Church did become "almost the same as the population," because eventually almost every European was baptized as a Christian.