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from: The Ottonian empire depended upon the compliance
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05-03-21
18:05:27
The Ottonian empire depended upon the compliance of both the Church and ruling-class women. I argue that the erasure of pain from her picture of martyrdom ultimately serves the consolidation of power by Otto the Great. In order to keep torture (the infliction of bodily pain with the goal of producing "true" speech, such as recantation or confession) distinct from ordeal (the manifestation of truth, usually interpreted as God's will, by means of bodily signs), I will use the term torment for the actions that constitute torture or ordeal. I find one plausible answer in Augustine, who explains in The City of God that although both the good and the wicked suffer, they (and their suffering) are different. Good men are tested and purified by suffering, whereas bad men are ruined by it. In Augustine's words, "Stir a cesspit, and a foul stench arises; stir a perfume, and a delightful fragrance ascends. But the movement is the same."The primary reason for God to punish the good as well as the bad is that the good also (although to a lesser degree) love this temporal life rather than despising it. If they despised it, they would not be afraid to reform others even if they were endangered by doing so.
