Texts in Context: The Dowry of Our Lady
At the same time as a high tide of mysticism in England, the synthesis of Christendom was collapsing, thanks in part to its founder, the papacy.
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history
Texts in Context: Blood Upon the Roses
The Hundred Years’ War and the Wars of the Roses are infamously complex, so here’s an inattentive summary.
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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: 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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