Barbara Newman teaches at Northwestern University near Chicago. Her most recent books are The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships and a translation of Richard Methley’s collected works.
Though this measure quaint confine me, And I chip out words and plane them, They shall yet be true and clear, When I finally have filed them. Love glosses and gilds them . . .
Arnaut Daniel, translated by Ezra Pound
The history of culture affords few absolute beginnings, but the temptation to posit them can be irresistible. The notion that there might have been a first...
Hildegard of Bingen, 12th-century prophet extraordinaire, would not have been alarmed by the outbreak of Y2K fever, but she would have known how to seize the moment. Eight hundred years ago, readers treasured yet trembled at her predictions of the apocalypse to come, asking: When will the ominous ‘Age of the Fiery Dog’ begin? Which monasteries were to be seized by secular lords, humbled and disendowed? Had the Antichrist already been conceived in his mother’s womb? Was there still time to avert the threatened wrath of God?‘
Medieval Christians understood themselves to be interconnected to an extent that would surprise many people today, at least in Western cultures. Their minds and hearts were legible to other people as well...
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