Another Country
It was only when I looked at my calendar this morning, and saw the reminder that my rent is due shortly, that I realized that I have now been in Barcelona for a whole month (plus one day). Lacking the usual cycle of lectures and other teaching sessions, I’ve still had regular telecons and other virtual discussions through which to reckon the passage of time, but these are different. When I’m teaching I always number my lectures consecutively so it’s easy for me to look at my notes and see that we’re, say, approaching half-term. That gives me a sense of progress which I must admit I don’t feel with scheduled telecons, which seem more cyclic – i.e. going around in circles most of the time.
Other than that, I’ve settled in here better than I expected. I’ve even managed to memorize the codes needed to get into my flat – no mean feat given my fading powers of recollection. Progress on the research has been a bit slower than expected, but I hope to finish the paper I’m working on by the weekend.
Next week is Study Week in Maynooth, including a public holiday on Monday 30th October to mark Samhain. Wednesday November 1st is a (national) public holiday in Spain too, Tots Sants (“All Saints” in Catalan). That would be the third public holiday since I arrived in Barcelona, but I won’t be here for it, as I have to make a flying visit to another country to give a talk, and do a few other things.
This reminds me that I should send an update on the affair of Maynooth University’s Governing Authority. As you may recall, the Powers That Be initially decided to scrap elections to the Governing Authority of the University in favour of selection. There was a protest at this authoritarian plan and a petition was raised. After initially proposing a mixture of election and selection, The Management finally backtracked and agreed to elections for all five internal representatives. Although the elections happened after I moved to Barcelona, they were held online so I was able to vote. The process is now complete, and I send congratulations to the five duly elected representatives!
One thing I hope the new members of Governing Authority will do concerns the outcomes of Maynooth University’s “Staff Climate and Culture Survey” which was carried out in 2022 with the promise made to participants that results would be published in early 2023. No such results have ever communicated to staff (or anyone else that I am aware of) and all mention of this survey has been wiped off the University’s web pages. Perhaps the new members of GA can push for the long overdue publication of this information?
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This entry was posted on October 25, 2023 at 10:27 am and is filed under Barcelona, Biographical, Maynooth with tags Governing Authority, Maynooth University, Staff Climate and Culture Survey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
In the Dark 
October 25, 2023 at 6:34 pm
I doubt that either Ireland or Spain will be celebrating October 31st as the anniversary of the day on which Martin Luther began the Reformation in 1517…
October 25, 2023 at 6:36 pm
Was that the day when he started living on a Diet of Worms?
October 25, 2023 at 7:38 pm
No, that was four years later.
In 1517 a preacher named Tetzel passed near Wittenberg, where Luther was a monk, soliciting money for Masses and prayers to get loved ones out of ‘Purgatory’ (which I cannot find in the Bible) to heaven. Luther, disgusted, objected in a letter containing 95 propositions (‘theses’) to his Archbishop in Mainz, who had let Tetzel preach there for a cut of the money raised. Luther dated his letter the day before All Saints’ Day, and All Saints Day is November 1st and the day before All Souls’ Day. Probably he also nailed his theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg as a challenge to debate. That was not as dramatic as it is often portrayed today but was a normal academic practice, and church doors acted as noticeboards. Luther chose his day well, for on All Saints’ Day crowds used that door to venerate the many saints’ relics collected inside, and on All Souls’ Day Catholics remember the dead, many supposedly in Purgatory.
There had been previous mediaeval comparisons of the Catholic church against the New Testament, but nobody of Luther’s stature stood behind them. Nor was printing with moveable metal type known in Europe until Gutenberg devised it in Mainz a few decades earlier. Printing was the internet of its time, for any literate man could read out Luther’s pungent Bible-based tracts to a crowd of peasants resentful of taxes to maintain church privilege.
Luther could not be ignored, because his critique was a threat to church income. In 1520 came a papal decree that he must recant within 60 days or be excommunicated for heresy, and perhaps burnt. He burnt the decree in public. The next year, at the city of Worms on the Rhine, Luther stood before the Holy Roman Emperor (elected over the many Germanic states) Charles V. Charles was, at 21, the world’s most powerful man: ruler of the German princes, and also of Spain and its growing Empire in the Americas, where the Catholic church was spreading. Luther, pressed to say if he would retract, ended by saying:
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason – for I do not trust in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves – I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.
Later accounts include the more famous words, “Here I stand. I can do no other”, but we do not know if Luther actually spoke them. He managed to get away, and was protected by a sympathetic local ruler while he continued his writings.
May 1, 2024 at 3:56 am
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