Texts in Context: Behold, a Pale Horse
The sophisticated, prosperous world of the High Middle Ages was brought down almost singlehandedly by one of the smallest things in existence.
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Texts in Context
Texts in Context: O Rose Thou Art Sick
Like every other time, the High Middle Ages were doomed to pass; but as they did, a certain kind of civilizational innocence seems to have gone with them.
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Texts in Context: The Chalice and the Sword
The thirteenth century was the high noon of Christendom; which also means it is when its light began to decline.
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Texts in Context: The Secret of the Rose—Part II
Both the origin and the ultimate development of courtly love are to be found in far stranger places than we might predict.
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Texts in Context: The Secret of the Rose—Part I
Romantic love certainly existed before the eleventh century. What the troubadours invented was the idea that it was a good thing.
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Texts in Context: An Examination of the Holy Office
The Inquisition might be the single most faultily-understood institution in history; and yet there is a core of truth in all the errors about it.
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Texts in Context: The Apostolic Poverty Movement
One of the most potent forces throughout medieval society was the apostolic poverty movement, heretical and orthodox by turns; but what was it?
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Texts in Context: The Queen of the Sciences
“What great advantages would philosophy give us over other men, if by studying it we could learn to govern our passions?” — Peter Abelard
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Texts in Context: The Real Renaissance
If there is an era that truly deserves to be hailed as possessing a new energy of civilization-spanning rebirth, it is the beginning of the High Middle Ages.
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Texts in Context: Timeline of the Early Middle Ages
Just as Roman law and Christian faith were being torn to pieces in the Mediterranean, parchment and pen had appeared among the barbarians of the north …
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