The "conformist" pose adopted by the first viscount, whose support was overwhelmingly given to Marian priests, was quickly superseded by Lady Magdalen's active support for
seminarist clergy during which "the Catholicism of the Brownes was, in some sense, radicalised, or at least refined and concentrated" (p.
Several of the essays take up a position more likely to appeal to readers of the James Joyce Quarterly than my
seminarists. Thus Sean Latham on interruption, Michael Rubenstein on the sewer, Marjorie Howes on memory, Cheryl Temple Herr on difficulty, and Maud Ellmann on waste are highly academic.
The something in question is "the modern" or "modernity." If you haven't spent a lot of time in humanities seminars at prestigious universities, you probably have no idea what these words mean in the sense intended by Greenblatt and all the other
seminarists. Webster's Dictionary tells us that the primary meaning of "modern" is "of, relating to, or characteristic of the present or the immediate past." But that strictly temporal sense of "modern" is not at all what Greenblatt and his colleagues mean by "modern." I'd like to tell you exactly what they do mean, but I can't.
The
seminarists are very alert to the significance of any departures from standard views of how these sins are ordered (e.g., Dante's hierarchies in the Comedy).
One of the major Jesus
Seminarists tells us that the debate about the kingdom of God is whether it is "salvation or ethics." He claims that for Jesus the kingdom of God was ethics, and for his followers "ethics was salvation." But not all agree.
The negative affect dominating the representation of the 'Lehrerseminar', on the other hand, is lent authority by the fact that Paul's own caption is reproduced along with a photograph that depicts a set of stiffly posed, formally clad and becapped
seminarists standing on the front steps of an imposing public building, with a row of four masters seated on chairs in front of them.
It was performed privately by a group of
seminarists in Puy-en-Velay after the war, although the version, which was based on transcripts, was slightly different from the one we ar e now considering.
While contemplating the signs of Barbino's first wet dream on his underwear that she has taken to the river, she comments: "Ah, youth, it is a great time for sowing seed." And "sowing seed," besides its sexual meaning, also refers to the
seminarists whose underwear Lenta often washed, to the seminar which the grown-up Barbino will conduct on the anxieties of his youth, and to the literal meaning of "throwing seeds" which we may find grown one day.(5)
Their
seminarists talk more of Calvin and Luther [than of the Holy Fathers of the Church] ...