hathycol | (no subject)

Still no snow, but it's so cold that it won't rain properly and makes does with hailstoning. This was great fun this morning, when the car refused to be defrosted, as it had hailstoned and them melted. Twenty minutes with a tea towel, scraping it off with an old card and generaly shouts of "FUCK it's cold" I actually made it into work.

Great fun.

Then, of course, I had to go to a tutorial. My divinity class is full off... I'm trying to think of a nice, non-offensive term than just CRAZY GOD-BOTHERERS but I'm afraid that's the only term. They're scary. They're weird, because they're all sycophantic and laugh at the lecturer and are just a bit scary, really.

Oh well. The real joy came in a tutorial, when I used my HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE to trump the Catholic bashing. They are heartily anti-Catholic, I discovered. I got prickly after a comment about '... and then they came up with Purgatory, which is just stupid, really.'

Well, you know, it's not by my system of belief, but far be it for me to comment when I'm sat next to someone training for the Presbyterian ministry. Other slightly iffy comments have also put me on edge. The problem is, I sort of can't justify the ruling orders of the church at the time of the Reformation, because the Popes and Cardinals were mostly naff at the time. Argh.

The tutor then asked questions that to me, as a historian, seemed stupid. The major change in the church since The Great Schism? Good grief, where do I start? What about the Papal Schism? Moving to Avignon? Cistercians? The Mendicants? Fourth Lateran Council? Innocent III all by himself? The Crusades? The Inquisition?

I may have mentioned all of these, using precise terms and occasionally dates when I knew them. The Black Death started in 1384; the Fourth Lateran Council which is still occasionally referred to in the modern church was in 1215. Bernard of Clairveux would have had a great deal of difficulty being involved in all of 'The Crusades Movement' as that barrel of fun started in 1095, Bernard got involved for the Second Crusade, but the Crusades didn't properly end up about the 15th-century!

And yes, I will refer to the saints as saints. I can't help it. I know it's not professional, and I don't do it in lectures, but they are saints to me. Er. I know that sounds a little stupid, but I was taught by Dominicans and Jesuits. It's instinctive. It's a... thing. And I have a feeling the point of this course is to say how lovely Luther and Calvin and Knox were, and no, that's bollocks, really. They were all as bad as each other and it's all just mad anyway.

ARGH. So I sort of slapped a lot of people down, and tried not to insult the tutor, even though he sounded a lot like Alan Partridge. I would have sniggered, but I was freezing to death - no room seemed to have heating on almost all day.

Then I came home, and crawled into bed. Maybe that was a mistake. I feel all groggy and grouchy and just a bit out of it.

Tomorrow I am going to the zoo! This is very exciting. The penguins are unlikely to be historically aware, which is a nice feeling.