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Briefly Noted

Andrew Willard Jones follows his masterful study of the “sacramental kingdom” of Louis IX with this sweeping historiography of the Church, from its foundations in Eden up to the present moment. The plot assumes that Christianity is in fact true and that the protagonist is the Church. He opens . . . . Continue Reading »

The Myth of Medieval Paganism

They don’t look very Christian—those strange faces made of leaves, and those women displaying cartoonishly enlarged genitals on the walls of medieval churches. Most people who have explored the medieval architecture of Western Europe have heard a tour guide explain that a particular carving . . . . Continue Reading »

In the Academic Sandbox

During the late summer and early fall of 2017, Rachel ­Fulton Brown, a fifty-two-year-old associate professor of medieval history at the University of Chicago, found herself a pariah among many of her fellow medievalists in academia. A member of the Chicago faculty since 1994, Brown had won two . . . . Continue Reading »

The Age of Concentration

Many regard Russia as backward, lagging behind the West. This is not so. Our shared civilization is changing, and because of our raw experience of the twentieth century, my country is in some respects ahead of the West. I have described the coming epoch as a new medievalism (“The New Middle . . . . Continue Reading »

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