The Wordhoard

From 2013 I have recently spent a few months of my time in Europe travelling around to view manuscripts that are necessary to my PhD project, which is a study of the manuscripts of the letters of Pope Leo the Great (don’t worry, my wife has been able to do some travelling with me, too!). I would like to share with you, my friends, about one of the more powerful journeys I took, to a monastery in…

Tonight I finished The Iliad again. I started this trip through Homer’s grand war epic at the end of January, so it took me a little over 5 months to get through. While I read The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad along the way, the main consumer of my time away from my day job was teaching a swathe of Greek Fathers and then Augustine’s City of God. It doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to take this long,…

Look ahead at maybe figuring out how to edit these letters

Back in March 2022, my book The Manuscripts of Leo the Great’s Letters: The Transmission and Reception of Papal Documents in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages came out. This is a book that does what it says on the tin — over 468 pages (plus bibliography and indices) I discuss hundreds of manuscripts that represent dozens of letter collections that include letters of Pope St Leo the Great. It is…

Why a sword-and-sorcery film with a power metal soundtrack would work.

I just got back from a trip to Toronto for surgery. Besides the surgery, there were some good times with family, including my cousin and me trying to explain to my uncle that “growling into a microphone” isn’t the only form of heavy metal. I extolled to him the virtues of power metal, for example. Here’s Rhapsody of Fire’s song Emerald Sword: Power metal, unlike death metal, does not involve…

Spur of the moment review of a book I read 24 years ago.

Arthurian Legends of the Middle Ages by George W. CoxMy rating: 3 of 5 starsI’m not sure how highly to rate this book. If you’re a 14-year-old kid in rural Alberta who loves Arthuriana and whose whole family is involved in the local production of the musical Camelot, this is a 5-star book. I loved it when I was 14 — and it’s definitely pitched at adults.24 years later, I haven’t reread…

“Allora”, “Welcome” and other ANCIENT MYSTERIES

As you probably don’t know, I have been hired to be a Latin/Greek Fellow for the Ancient Language Institute (ALI), which means I’m back to teaching languages! One of the exciting things about ALI is the fact that they/we use active learning pedagogy, with comprehensible input and only using the target language — like my TESOL training. There are many benefits to this. When you start having to…

The Return of Arthur in 2021

Growing up, stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were among my favourite things. I remember sitting just inside my bedroom door at night in Grade 3, illuminated by the hall light, reading, reading these stories. In junior high, I read T H White’s The Once and Future King, and my family was involved in the local music and drama society’s production of Camelot a few years…

Nothing is lost (when you write a book)

I have written a book, called The Manuscripts of Leo the Great’s Letters: The Transmission and Reception of Papal Documents in the Middle Ages. It is a transformed, expanded, sifted, revised, revised, revised version of that which was once my PhD dissertation. It is over 500 pages of words, including the index that I made for it. Brepols will publish it this year, DV. In a sense, this book has…

Reaching for the real: St Augustine and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

I just gave a lecture about St Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana (I assigned RPH Green’s translation, On Christian Teaching) on Monday, and, since that text has been cited as the place where Augustine invents semiotics, semiotics has been on my mind a bit. And a couple of weeks ago, when choosing my next piece of fiction to read, I decided to finally crack open my copy of Umberto Eco’s 2004…

The small consolations of ancient “consolatio”

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A friend recently passed away from as-yet unknown (to me) medical causes. He was 37, going on 38. Lots of thoughts and responses have been going through my mind and heart, of course. At the same time, professionally, I am starting to work on a book chapter about ancient letters and the science of historical study, so various thoughts about ancient letters have been emerging.

10 books, no. 3: The Philokalia

My third of ten books (sorry I fell behind on this) was The Philokalia, vol. 1:

The Philokalia is a five-volume anthology of Greek-language (plus a Greek translation of bits of John Cassian) ascetic/mystical texts focussed on the art of prayer, the prayer of the heart, pure prayer — viz., the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

It was compiled in 1782 by…

Was Late Antiquity an age of spirituality?

Before I launch into this post, I’d like to make it clear that I greatly admire the work of Kurt Weitzmann and have enormously profited from the book Age of Spirituality, which the Metropolitan Museum Art has available as a free download. Now, onto the show.

Sometimes, when I read titles of articles and books about Late Antiquity, and sometimes even the content, I get the impression that there…

10 books, no. 2: Ubi Fera Sunt

I was twice challenged on Facebook to post a book cover per day for a period of days. I forget if it was 7 books in 7 days or 10 in 10. I chose 10. I think they were supposed to be influential and not just favourites, so I sought books that have influenced me. Allow me to write some musings on them, one by one…

Book No. 2: Ubi Fera Sunt by Maurice Sendak, translated by Richard A. Lafleur

When I…

10 Books, no. 1: The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

I was twice challenged on Facebook to post a book cover per day for a period of days. I forget if it was 7 books in 7 days or 10 in 10. I chose 10. I think they were supposed to be influential and not just favourites, so I sought books that have influenced me. Allow me to write some musings on them, one by one…

Book No. 1: The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

The Tale of Peter Rabbit has…

I am just beginning to (finally) read Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. In my final trip to the library of St Paul University yesterday, I read Andrew Louth’s 1990 review of the book in question. The review was overall positive, but one note he struck is one that I sometimes feel as well.

Louth observes that “today” (that is, 1990), when…

7th-c fresco from when Curia became a church, now in the museum at Cripta Balbi, Rome

There is a website called Read the Fathers, and it sets out a reading plan that renews every seven years to read big chunks of most of the significant ancient Christian writers, ordered according to the old Victorian Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series. The original seven-year cycle ran…

Some reasons to read Beowulf

Here are just a few reasons why you might want to read Beowulf. First, it is a famous example of literature from the Early Middle Ages. Second, it represents English-language literature in its infancy. Third, it has had impacted modern literature since its rediscovery.

The Early Middle Ages, although politically fractured and certainly with a lower standard of living than the Later Roman Empire…