So merely saying that Samuel Lutz didn\u2019t write what Jacob Spori said he did is misleadingly incomplete because it treats the connection from Lutz to Spori as if it didn\u2019t exist. As we\u2019ve seen, the relationship is complicated and involves a lot of reanalysis by Spori, but it\u2019s there. Pretending there\u2019s no connection will inevitably leave people wondering: well, what did Lutz actually write?<\/p>\n
To understand \u201cLutius Gratiano,\u201d this is what we need to do:<\/p>\n
- \n
- If you want to understand the prophecy in circulation, look at its textual history. People who looked into the prophecy from the early to late 20th century noted that versions differed slightly, but no one bothered to record the variants or examine the consequences.<\/li>\n
- If you want to understand Spori\u2019s quotation of Lutz, look at Spori\u2019s quotation practice. If much of what he places in quotation marks is a summary or free rendering, it\u2019s not surprising if that\u2019s true of \u201cLutius Gratiano\u201d as well.<\/li>\n
- If you want to understand Spori\u2019s publication of \u201cLutius Gratiano,\u201d look at the rest of the article in which it appears. Spori has quite a bit more to say in it, and it all fits into his biographical context.<\/li>\n
- If you want to understand the relation of \u201cLutius Gratiano\u201d to the writings of Samuel Lutz, you have to look at the rest of Lutz\u2019s writings and the context of optimistic apocalyptic pietism.<\/li>\n
- If you want to understand the prophecy of \u201cLutius Gratiano,\u201d look at how other examples of the genre of prophecy have taken shape and been used in new contexts historically, rather than looking at it as a solitary text in isolation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
While urban legends may not be the church\u2019s best public face, cringing in embarrassment is not the answer. Any group with informal avenues of communication is going to have something similar (and if you\u2019re reading this, you\u2019re part of the problem; we should all be studying conference talks in the Liahona<\/em>).<\/p>\n
We have in \u201cLutius Gratiano\u201d a rare opportunity to study a prophecy\u2019s development in considerable detail over 128 years and counting. The prophecy had a function for Spori and others in how they understood and resolved tensions relating to \u201cthings past, present, and things to come,\u201d to re-use Spori\u2019s phrase. But it can also serve more broadly as an example of the genre. Looking closely at \u201cLutius Gratiano\u201d has heightened my suspicion that some of the basic assumptions about medieval and early modern prophetic texts need to be re-evaluated.<\/p>\n
Finally, I continue to believe that scholarship from a place of sympathy (and even affection, love and commitment) is often better than scholarship driven by disdain, resentment or loathing. If our interest is motivated by sympathy rather than disdain, we\u2019re better able to see connections that would otherwise elude us.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/byui-aerial-ed.jpg\")
<\/a>Jacob Spori Building, BYU-Idaho<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Now if you will excuse a personal note [as I said at the end of the presentation], and in the interest of providing the complete story, I\u2019ve come to discover that Jacob Spori is something of an intellectual ancestor of mine. As mentioned, Jacob Spori was the founding principal of the Bannock Stake Academy in southeastern Idaho. It soon shifted from offering elementary to high school-level courses, and then to college courses, first as Ricks Academy and then, in 1923, as Ricks College. My grandparents met there in 1938; my mother in law graduated in 1954, my mother in 1965. Two of my sisters attended in the 1990s. In 2003, the name changed to BYU-Idaho, and I taught there for 3 years beginning in 2010. Today, the Jacob Spori Building sits at the center of a campus that educates some 23,000 students. The sponsoring church is today well-established in the American religious landscape, while its intellectual tradition continues to develop.<\/p>\n
As for Spori\u2019s prophecy attributed to \u201cLutius Gratiano,\u201d it still circulates. I first encountered it as a missionary in 1991, while I last heard it used in a lay sermon in 1998. Of course I was appalled, and so, as a good Sunday School teacher, I enlightened my students the next week about the prophecy\u2019s true origin, much in the spirit of Christian August Behr<\/a> in 1794. Today I would probably explain the prophecy somewhat differently than I did then. \u201cLutius Gratiano\u201d continues to appear in online discussion, and it was on my mind in 2005 when I was developing the proposal that would lead to a research fellowship and my ongoing research program.<\/p>\n
Now that original spark of interest has caught up with me, however. I think I finally understand the prophecy of \u201cLutius Gratiano\u201d and its significance for early modern prophetic texts, but that understanding comes at a cost: you tell yourself and everyone else that you\u2019re observing a phenomenon dispassionately from the outside, with nothing but scholarly interest in some long-dead topic of the 15th and 16th centuries, but then you find yourself still a part of the story, participating in it from the inside.<\/p>\n
[End of presentation.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The question \u201cDid Samuel Lutz really write this\u201d is ultimately not as useful as the question of how the prophecy of \u201cLutius Gratiano\u201d came about, and what function it served for those who kept it in circulation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":42206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mormon-studies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/lchbg1-sm.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42314,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42312\/revisions\/42314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}