A trip to the Spanish exhibt

Today Bill and I got to get in free to the Seattle Art Museum as someone we know from the local goth club was working there, Thanks Charles! The Spanish display was fairly nice, but the written plaques and the audio tour were inexcusably bad. Left Bill and I feeling rather depressed about the level of education in this country.

One of the highlights springing to mind was how "spain improved foriegn relations and supported the American war of independance" of course it did. Cause they had a French monarchy, and the French were fighting against the British and so naturaly they were going to side with the French.

They showed Philip II, but nothing about the Spanish armada, any wars, anything really. No history of the period to be learned, not really even any history of the art, artist style or otherwise. It made my long for Berlin. Sitting in front of the Ishtar gate for at least 20 minutes, proably longer I lost track of time, listening to the detailed finding and excavation and rebuilding of the gate. Sigh. It was neat to see everything, but I don't think I really came out with any more knowlege than when I went in, which is a sad thing to happen when you visit a museum.

But as it was free, I think we'll be heading out to the Mercury for drinks later. Maybe Charles will be there and we can buy him some to say thank you!

Popular Religion in the Song (1127-1276)

Last night I finished reading Valerie Hanson's book Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276. It was just 200 pages, but it was the most detailed look at popular religion for this time period to date. She drew on some really great sources, ones I wish were translated into English, but as they are not, just encourage me to study my Chinese harder. Particularly Hong Mai's The Record of the Listener (Yijian Zhi) which 207 of 420 chapter survive containing many anecdotes about miracles, ghosts, and other supernatural events happening to people in all walks of life. She had several translations from it, and it just made me wish someone would translate the whole thing! Or at least the good parts!

She had several good points in her book. She argued how to most people it was not important whether a God was Daoist, Buddhist, or local, but they offered sacrifices to the one who had the best reputation for providing miracles to his worshipers. It was a very pragmatic approach towards religion that was shown. But the gods too needed worshipers to provide them with things, a nice statue, a good temple, and worthy offerings. Gods frequently were weakened by lack of worship and became to weak to do anything to attract new worshipers. The Gods during this time were very human. Frequently deified people, often from a local area. In the Song it was no longer just the officials and generals that became gods, but also worthy peasants who showed great sacrifice or filial piety were also deified. Animal gods and nature gods were mostly ignored. Gods were seen as being very human, with very human needs.

Gods were also incorporated into the state bureaucracy. This is different to the celestial bureaucracy where they had their own positions and titles. But the Song state would award titles to Gods based on their merits. The largest was an 8 character title, then the Gods would have to start giving titles to their wives and sons. It was a very bureaucratic procedure, first the local people had to petition the magistrate, who would submit a proposal stating who the God was and what miracles he had performed that should have him be granted a title by the state. These investigations were then investigated by a local committee and then submitted for approval. The committee went around interviewing people in the area to make sure that the miracles were indeed true.

I find the Song's control of local religion to be really interesting. How they tried to encourage and measure certain cults with official approval, and how they tried to eliminate the unofficial cults, frequently destroying alters and temples, and often how totally ineffective this was. However the granting of titles to gods had an interesting effect. Gods were often seen as less power, and depending on their titles, were less important than living human officials who they had to obey. One god even complained how since he'd been granted his title people stopped worshiping him as his title of immortal was not as powerful as his original position. So they gave him his old title back, and people came back and worshiped him again.
A deities title was often given in the form of a plaque that would be displayed in their temple, or as inscriptions outside the temple.

Hansen also looked at the rise of regional cults and how they spread, often with the merchants who worshiped them but also as the people migrated they often brought gods with them. She argued that as people had greater mobility the idea that a god was so restricted to one area started to seem unbalanced. When people went on journeys and took up posts they wanted their gods to go with them, (165) This angered many people at the time who objected to the local Gods being worshiped in areas that had not been visited by the god when he was mortal.

It was a very enjoyable book, Patricia Ebrey said it was "the best book on popular religion in the Song". (Course there aren't that many). But it was enjoyable and a nice fairly easy read, for an academic work. It definitely put the Gods in a very human light. The only thing I would have liked would have been for her to add a little more of the social context of why this was happening, as Judith Boltz did in her essay on officals and local religion and the Taoist thunder cults from the same time period. But very worthwhile nonetheless.