turn your watch back about a hundred thousand years

Toward the end of 2017, I think, I started doing something which I eventually called...

[my apologies, I've removed this post as I work on it for publication]

Two of them are good. One of them is not good! ...Plus bonus Pope Emeritus...

# I asked a lot of people what had been the highlight of the conference...

is playing my song: The immediate response to death in many medieval communities was song....

Barry Unsworth's 1995 novel has a terrific hook: Sometime in England's fourteenth century, a demoralized,...

So there are way more orthodox gay people, seeking to live in obedience to the...

Yaa Gyasi's debut novel, Homegoing, is the uneven execution of a brilliant and haunting premise....

So for reasons best known to my confessor, I decided to watch the premiere of...

with a lovely tribute. From 2011, but I just found it via people reminiscing about...

why not start your journey w/Kristin during Lent? Undset was an obsessive researcher, and her...

says a lot of important things: The ritual observance of dietary rules—fasting and abstinence from...

I'm telling you, ClerkOfOxford is twitter mvp. Follow her! February 2 is Candlemas, the Feast...

for the University Bookman. Papist polemics, monks with painted eyelids, "apostolic viragoes" and more! You...

excellent metaphor and accurate insight at the heart of this piece from a scholar of...

And it's St Aelred's abbey, too: A hauntingly beautiful set of photos, appearing on DailyMail, shows...

as usual I seem to have kept the most important stuff for the last three...

Going into this book I knew basically nothing about the beguines--not even how you pronounce...

for AmCon: The novels of dark fantasist Tim Powers often flow out of weird, grim...

My talk at Calvin College is available at Livestream and YouTube (below): I thought this...

relevance! ...McIntosh also takes care to outline the change in attitude toward the poor as...

pretty great: ANTHONY THE GREAT: spiritually I don’t even want to talk about any food...

St Nicholas was a very popular saint in the Middle Ages, and with all the...

with tons of fascinating stuff: In the twelfth century, single women began moving in large...

at Respectful Conversations: I loved a lot of things about Justin's first contribution to this...

One reason I love the Weakerthans is that their songs are set in their hometown....

with a short post: This is just a quick post to note that we don’t...

from the Gospels to the Golden Girls: The people in 68 Scarborough St., in Hartford,...

In 1957 a national sample of Americans was asked what they would think of a...

I have another opportunity to use my "eye-boobs" tag. see the calamities! (via Libresco)