Fat Friar (was ghosts, magicians and babies was Re: Questions

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 119291


Carol notes:
> <snip>
>  I really don't see any contradiction between being a wizard and
being a friar in the *early* Middle Ages. Even as late as the
fourteenth century, when witch-burning was in full swing, he could
have been known in the MW for performing "miracles" instead of magic.
> > 
> 
> Potioncat:
> My curiosity was how did he mangage to train for both.  I thought 
> boys went to the monestary very young to prepare.  Or is a fiar a 
> different sort of religious figure?  I know a fiar isn't a priest, 
> but I don't know the difference.

Carol responds:
On the simplest level, monks lived in monasteries, which were
communally owned, but friars, at least originally, owned no property
and had to beg for food. I can't see our Fat Friar having that
lifestyle, however! 

At any rate, I don't think that monks had to be educated in a
monastery as long as they could read and write, and I'm not sure that
friars (who didn't copy or illustrate manuscripts) had to be educated
at all. It appears that you could become a monk or a friar at any age.

(There's a story that St. Thomas Aquinas's father intended to place
him in a monastery to become a monk, but young Thomas announced his
intention to become a friar instead, at which point the rest of the
family flew at him in a rage, tore his friar's frock from his back,
and locked him up in a cage like a lunatic. Don't know how true it is,
but there was clearly a *social* distinction between monks and friars.
You can see it again in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." The monk is very
worldly and likes to ride and hunt; the friar thinks he should be
given money for hearing confessions but thinks visiting lepers is
beneath him. Chaucer, of couse, is ridiculing both of the and
attacking the Church for falling into worldliness.)

I don't know how helpful any of this is, or how JKR's view of
education fits with the historical reality, which probably varied
somewhat from order to order and century to century, anyway. But as I
said in another post, it appears that monks as well as the Fat Friar
were educated at Hogwarts. Doesn't Sir Cadogan run inside a portrait
of two monks when he's showing the way to Trelawney's tower? And those
monks were presumably Hogwarts graduates (and of course wizards) like
the Fat Friar.

Maybe it's one of those things we shouldn't worry about, like how the
entrance to the Chamber of Secrets came to be connected to the
(fairly) modern plumbing of Moaning Myrtle's restroom.

Carol, who needs to read the books again but is spending time posting
instead