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and also @saphura

well since you asked so nicely

here’s two things that i don’t think fanfic writers understand about pre-enlightenment europe:

first, there is zero evidence that paganism continued to exist as a practiced faith in western europe after about 900 CE. there is more evidence for demons. (reading on this, among other things) if you want to make the case that with the statute of secrecy, wizards erased all evidence of their existence as your justification for pagan wizards, that’s fine, but you’re then left with the question of where the stories about witches came from.

second, there was no way for a non-christian organization to function. period. it didn’t happen. jewish groups, especially pre-1492, were very small and very quiet; islamic groups kept out of christian europe; there were no other options. if you were a guild, if you were a school, if you were a group of any form, if you were a government–you were christian. it was explicit. there wasn’t even a conception of how to organize without invoking christianity.

so when, in or about 950, hogwarts was founded, it had to be founded in a christian framework. there’s a big, huge, gigantic problem though: in 950, education happened one-on-one, through tutors or apprenticeships. the only, only institution educating in a group format was the church.

why? because clergy came from all classes, because clergy were required to be (at least partially) literate, and because the majority of the population (in some places and eras, from any demographic) was not literate. religious institutions were the only places collecting significant numbers of children and giving them an education.

there were two forms of this: cathedral schools, which produced priests, and monastic schools, which produced monks and nuns. (some reading)

couple of reasons why hogwarts would be monastic and not a cathedral:

the boring, the reasonable, hogwarts isn’t anywhere near anything that would be a cathedral, but monasteries were all over the place and the more remote, the better

priests were all male, which makes two of the founders difficult to explain

scotland was more connected to the irish monastic form of christianity than the mainland european bishop focused christianity

so. if you’re going to create a school in 950 in scotland that accepts students from all backgrounds with the goal of educating them, the most reasonable framework for this is the monastic school.

(monastic schools were also notoriously apolitical, which would go a long way to explaining some things in the books…)

but wait! you say. what about christianity and magic?

i’m so glad you asked. medieval catholicism didn’t actually have a problem with harry potter magic, as long as it was dressed up in the appropriate forms.

quote from holy feast and holy fast by caroline walker bynum:

By 1500, indeed, the model of the female saint, expressed both in popular veneration and in official canonizations, was in many ways the mirror image of society’s notion of the witch. Each was thought to be possessed, whether by God or by Satan; each seemed able to read the minds and hearts of others with uncanny shrewdness; each was suspected of flying through the air, whether in saintly levitation or biolocation, or in a witches’ Sabbath.

in other words, it’s not the things that people do that make them witches: it’s their relationship (or not) to God and the Church. things that we today would call magic–healing people by touching them, or saying incantations; turning one bread into many; transporting from place to place–all of these turn up in hagiographies of saints as miracles that they performed.

(complicating matters is that they did have a conception between good and bad witches, it’s just that all were damned. so you have good witches, who are doing good things, and bad witches, who are doing bad things, and saints, who are doing good things, and the quality of the thing…well it does matter, but it matters less than the position of the person doing it)

additionally, throughout the middle ages, you see records of people definitely doing magic which is contemporaneously acknowledged as magic who are…not getting burned as witches. the big easy example here is court alchemists & astrologers, who were all over the place telling the future and/or making things blow up and only really getting into trouble when their patrons did. (some reading)

there were also tumblr’s favorite women, the herbalist or local midwife (or, equally common, the wealthy widow). the line between “medicine” and “magic” was not all that well formed: if you knew that certain herbs with certain prayers would keep someone alive, who was to say that it was the herbs vs the prayers that did the heavy lifting? later there was a clear(er) distinction, but even then, the association of midwifery with witchcraft is not new and it is not unfounded. (more reading)

so there’s a deep, deep split here. because on the one hand, yes, people were (irregularly, but routinely) tortured and (less commonly) executed for witchcraft (under a variety of names). but on the other hand, people were socially rewarded for practicing magic within accepted forms, and while sometimes this was because the source of the magic was seen as different, sometimes it was not.

in this context, then, in this understanding that some people could (and did) work magic without being evil, in this society where education was the province of a very, very select group of people who were also (what a coincidence!) more likely to be workers of magic, in this situation that j.k. rowling seems to have absolutely no idea of–

hogwarts was a monastic school to produce good catholic magical monks and nuns.

helga hufflepuff is first and easiest, because helga is a midwife. you want an abortion? she can help with that. curse an ex-boyfriend? great! heal your child? she’s got that too. lost a cow? totally something she can help with. helga is a good christian, yes, and goes to church regularly, but it doesn’t occur to her for a while that some form of organized education might be helpful. she has her apprentices, and she grew up with tales about those who wanted too much, too badly, who didn’t think of the cost, and who did a deal with the devil as a result. but she thinks of this as the consequence of what she gets to do, which is putter around in her garden and make sure the crops come in on time. when they start talking about a monastic school, about a place to educate nuns in a little different way, a way that’s a little closer to god, she starts thinking about how to putter a little bigger and what that might mean.

salazar slytherin is the court alchemist. he came running north after an experiment went wrong (did it blow up? a little. was anyone hurt? not badly), looking for somewhere to go and someone to protect him–and this isn’t unusual, everyone has patrons and, and wizards don’t survive long without someone to explain to the church why these wizards are fine, thanks–and he finds that the local monasteries have more young children, young magical children than he’s used to, and he goes–oh. he is also 115% the reason why divination is a subject, because he is very good at explaining to people why their zodiac means they should leave their entire fortune to this brand new monastery, and he never, ever forgets that he has to rely on others, that his safety depends on people who secretly, deeply think he is a heretic, that he’s taking and educating and perverting their children, and that if they wanted to he and all his would die.

rowena ravenclaw is a nun. it’s not a profession she came to young; she came after her husband, after her daughter, after she was widowed and everyone looked at her a little differently, and a little sadly. after she started having visions, after her angry words started to hurt. so she went to a cloister, and discovered she was touched by god, and also that there were children here, like her daughter, who needed education and that she was very, very good at this. it’s rowena who reaches out to those she knows, here and there, saying, do you want to make this real? do you want to make this official? rowena has had a lot, and lost a lot, and found something else entirely, and is determined to take everyone along with her.

godric is a monk. he is not a very good monk. he is not big on the seclusion or the copying. he is very big on living in the community and helping them (he would make a decent fransciscan if he was born 500 years later). he’s an absolute stickler for penance, for himself or for anyone else, and also for justice. he became a monk because he got in an argument with a neighbor, and the next day the neighbor’s cow died, and there was an accusation made, so he decided that the appropriate solution was to vanish and made his way to ireland to become a monk. he sees people every day who don’t know what they can do, who do know what they can do but not how, who are hurting others and helping others and want only to know why, whether this was from god or from the devil, and he does his best to help them. but he can’t help but think that there must be some better way to do this, that if there was a monastery just for monks like him, they might be able to do something.

and also @saphura

well since you asked so nicely

here’s two things that i don’t think fanfic writers understand about pre-enlightenment europe:

first, there is zero evidence that paganism continued to exist as a practiced faith in western europe after about 900 CE. there is more evidence for demons. (reading on this, among other things) if you want to make the case that with the statute of secrecy, wizards erased all evidence of their existence as your justification for pagan wizards, that’s fine, but you’re then left with the question of where the stories about witches came from.

second, there was no way for a non-christian organization to function. period. it didn’t happen. jewish groups, especially pre-1492, were very small and very quiet; islamic groups kept out of christian europe; there were no other options. if you were a guild, if you were a school, if you were a group of any form, if you were a government–you were christian. it was explicit. there wasn’t even a conception of how to organize without invoking christianity.

so when, in or about 950, hogwarts was founded, it had to be founded in a christian framework. there’s a big, huge, gigantic problem though: in 950, education happened one-on-one, through tutors or apprenticeships. the only, only institution educating in a group format was the church.

why? because clergy came from all classes, because clergy were required to be (at least partially) literate, and because the majority of the population (in some places and eras, from any demographic) was not literate. religious institutions were the only places collecting significant numbers of children and giving them an education.

there were two forms of this: cathedral schools, which produced priests, and monastic schools, which produced monks and nuns. (some reading)

couple of reasons why hogwarts would be monastic and not a cathedral:

the boring, the reasonable, hogwarts isn’t anywhere near anything that would be a cathedral, but monasteries were all over the place and the more remote, the better

priests were all male, which makes two of the founders difficult to explain

scotland was more connected to the irish monastic form of christianity than the mainland european bishop focused christianity

so. if you’re going to create a school in 950 in scotland that accepts students from all backgrounds with the goal of educating them, the most reasonable framework for this is the monastic school.

(monastic schools were also notoriously apolitical, which would go a long way to explaining some things in the books…)

but wait! you say. what about christianity and magic?

i’m so glad you asked. medieval catholicism didn’t actually have a problem with harry potter magic, as long as it was dressed up in the appropriate forms.

quote from holy feast and holy fast by caroline walker bynum:

By 1500, indeed, the model of the female saint, expressed both in popular veneration and in official canonizations, was in many ways the mirror image of society’s notion of the witch. Each was thought to be possessed, whether by God or by Satan; each seemed able to read the minds and hearts of others with uncanny shrewdness; each was suspected of flying through the air, whether in saintly levitation or biolocation, or in a witches’ Sabbath.

in other words, it’s not the things that people do that make them witches: it’s their relationship (or not) to God and the Church. things that we today would call magic–healing people by touching them, or saying incantations; turning one bread into many; transporting from place to place–all of these turn up in hagiographies of saints as miracles that they performed.

(complicating matters is that they did have a conception between good and bad witches, it’s just that all were damned. so you have good witches, who are doing good things, and bad witches, who are doing bad things, and saints, who are doing good things, and the quality of the thing…well it does matter, but it matters less than the position of the person doing it)

additionally, throughout the middle ages, you see records of people definitely doing magic which is contemporaneously acknowledged as magic who are…not getting burned as witches. the big easy example here is court alchemists & astrologers, who were all over the place telling the future and/or making things blow up and only really getting into trouble when their patrons did. (some reading)

there were also tumblr’s favorite women, the herbalist or local midwife (or, equally common, the wealthy widow). the line between “medicine” and “magic” was not all that well formed: if you knew that certain herbs with certain prayers would keep someone alive, who was to say that it was the herbs vs the prayers that did the heavy lifting? later there was a clear(er) distinction, but even then, the association of midwifery with witchcraft is not new and it is not unfounded. (more reading)

so there’s a deep, deep split here. because on the one hand, yes, people were (irregularly, but routinely) tortured and (less commonly) executed for witchcraft (under a variety of names). but on the other hand, people were socially rewarded for practicing magic within accepted forms, and while sometimes this was because the source of the magic was seen as different, sometimes it was not.

in this context, then, in this understanding that some people could (and did) work magic without being evil, in this society where education was the province of a very, very select group of people who were also (what a coincidence!) more likely to be workers of magic, in this situation that j.k. rowling seems to have absolutely no idea of–

hogwarts was a monastic school to produce good catholic magical monks and nuns.

helga hufflepuff is first and easiest, because helga is a midwife. you want an abortion? she can help with that. curse an ex-boyfriend? great! heal your child? she’s got that too. lost a cow? totally something she can help with. helga is a good christian, yes, and goes to church regularly, but it doesn’t occur to her for a while that some form of organized education might be helpful. she has her apprentices, and she grew up with tales about those who wanted too much, too badly, who didn’t think of the cost, and who did a deal with the devil as a result. but she thinks of this as the consequence of what she gets to do, which is putter around in her garden and make sure the crops come in on time. when they start talking about a monastic school, about a place to educate nuns in a little different way, a way that’s a little closer to god, she starts thinking about how to putter a little bigger and what that might mean.

salazar slytherin is the court alchemist. he came running north after an experiment went wrong (did it blow up? a little. was anyone hurt? not badly), looking for somewhere to go and someone to protect him–and this isn’t unusual, everyone has patrons and, and wizards don’t survive long without someone to explain to the church why these wizards are fine, thanks–and he finds that the local monasteries have more young children, young magical children than he’s used to, and he goes–oh. he is also 115% the reason why divination is a subject, because he is very good at explaining to people why their zodiac means they should leave their entire fortune to this brand new monastery, and he never, ever forgets that he has to rely on others, that his safety depends on people who secretly, deeply think he is a heretic, that he’s taking and educating and perverting their children, and that if they wanted to he and all his would die.

rowena ravenclaw is a nun. it’s not a profession she came to young; she came after her husband, after her daughter, after she was widowed and everyone looked at her a little differently, and a little sadly. after she started having visions, after her angry words started to hurt. so she went to a cloister, and discovered she was touched by god, and also that there were children here, like her daughter, who needed education and that she was very, very good at this. it’s rowena who reaches out to those she knows, here and there, saying, do you want to make this real? do you want to make this official? rowena has had a lot, and lost a lot, and found something else entirely, and is determined to take everyone along with her.

godric is a monk. he is not a very good monk. he is not big on the seclusion or the copying. he is very big on living in the community and helping them (he would make a decent fransciscan if he was born 500 years later). he’s an absolute stickler for penance, for himself or for anyone else, and also for justice. he became a monk because he got in an argument with a neighbor, and the next day the neighbor’s cow died, and there was an accusation made, so he decided that the appropriate solution was to vanish and made his way to ireland to become a monk. he sees people every day who don’t know what they can do, who do know what they can do but not how, who are hurting others and helping others and want only to know why, whether this was from god or from the devil, and he does his best to help them. but he can’t help but think that there must be some better way to do this, that if there was a monastery just for monks like him, they might be able to do something.

Victor: Cannibalism!