Infant baptism in the Middle Ages

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Pax vobiscum!

I am reading a book called Ritual in Early Modern Europe right now. There is a passage in it that says something I have not heard before and sounds quite incorrect. I was wondering if anyone might be able to comment on it. The passage in question reads,

The sexual congress of the infant’s parents compounded the sin [original sin], and the shivering little boy or girl brought to the font was, in fact, a corrupted piece of flesh and a dangerous emissary of the devil. To expel the evil and make salvation possible, the priest had to act quickly after birth. Standing on the threshold of the church, the priest intoned, “I exorcise thee, unclean spirit…,accursed one, damned and to be damned…” The ritual promulgated the opinion that original sin was a form of bewitchment, and as long as the infant remained unbaptized the living themselves were endangered by a demonic presence.

There is no footnote after this paragraph, so I can’t check on his source. Where is he getting this from? I have never heard that baptism was ever viewed this way in the Middle Ages.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[Todd_Easton]

Exorcism seems to be a regular part of the Baptism rite.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1237 Since Baptism signifies liberation from sin and from its instigator the devil, one or more exorcisms are pronounced over the candidate. The celebrant then anoints him with the oil of catechumens, or lays his hands on him, and he explicitly renounces Satan. Thus prepared, he is able to confess the faith of the Church, to which he will be “entrusted” by Baptism. [Cf. *Romans 6:17.]

 

[Contarini]

Pax vobiscum!

I am reading a book called Ritual in Early Modern Europe right now. There is a passage in it that says something I have not heard before and sounds quite incorrect. I was wondering if anyone might be able to comment on it. The passage in question reads,

There is no footnote after this paragraph, so I can’t check on his source. Where is he getting this from? I have never heard that baptism was ever viewed this way in the Middle Ages.

In Christ,
Rand

Which part are you questioning? Baptism certainly involved exorcism, and nothing Muir’s saying sounds basically inaccurate to me, although he does put it in very colorful language.

The only question I’d have is whether it’s quite right to say that marital sex “compounds” original sin. What exactly does that mean? Is he talking about official theology or popular understanding? What are his sources? I’m not sure he’s wrong, but I’d like to hear the point expanded on.

Certainly medieval Christians believed that all sexual union involved venial sin, and it was commonly believed that this inevitable act of concupiscence was the means by which original sin was transmitted (not the sexual act itself, or even the pleasure of the act, both of which were intrinsically good–but these distinctions may have been lost on the popular level).

Edwin

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Pax vobiscum!

Edwin,

I guess the parts I was questioning were kind of what you mentioned, about marital sex made “a corrupted piece of flesh and a dangerous emissary of the devil”. That and people believing that any unbaptized person was “a demonic presence”.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[Contarini]

Pax vobiscum!

Edwin,

I guess the parts I was questioning were kind of what you mentioned, about marital sex made “a corrupted piece of flesh and a dangerous emissary of the devil”. That and people believing that any unbaptized person was “a demonic presence”.

In Christ,
Rand

Well, with these history-of-ritual type folks it’s sometimes hard to know when hard evidence ends and imaginative reconstruction begins. But this particular interpretation makes sense to me on the whole, even if it’s overstated. Remember that the only unbaptized people in most of medieval Europe were Jews. The statement sounds weird to us because we’re used to the idea that we’re cheek by jowl with unbaptized people all the time.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

P.S.

Have you read John Bossy’s Christianity in the West 1400-1700? It deals with some of these issues from a Catholic point of view, and puts the Middle Ages in a more positive light than it sounds like Muir does.

Edwin