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The Light Dark Ages

A new book debunks the myths about the medieval period
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The medieval period was not one “that abhorred novelty or an age of narrow conformity, but one in which the latest ideas were hotly debated.” Mary Wellesley reviews Seb Falk’s The Light Ages in The Guardian:

In The Light Ages, Seb Falk . . . points out that several accounts of the history of science begin sometime around 1600, as though scientific inquiry just popped out of the ground like a mushroom. But a mushroom is just the visible surface growth of a larger organism. And the same applies to medieval scientific thinking, which was complex, interconnected and wide-ranging. Far from being resistant to foreign ideas, medieval thinkers systematically translated works from Greek, Hebrew and Arabic by writers from Iberia to Persia. Falk speaks of the ‘irresistible medieval drive to tinker, to redesign, to incrementally improve or upgrade technology’ and the same was true of scientific thought.

This was not an age that abhorred novelty or an age of narrow conformity, but one in which the latest ideas were hotly debated. Medieval thinkers also sought to build on the learning of earlier ages, despite viewing pre-Christian writers with a whiff of suspicion. The early church fathers likened pagan philosophy to the gold and silver that the biblical Israelites took with them on their exodus from slavery – tainted by association, but still precious. This was the period, in Europe, of the first eyeglasses, the first mechanical clocks and the first universities. The Middle Ages were anything but ‘dark’.

The Light Ages takes the reader on a journey, following in the footsteps of a 14th-century English monk who was also a pathbreaking astronomer. John of Westwyck left few tangible traces of himself – a few manuscripts, some annotations and the occasional reference in a document are all that remain – but Falk imagines the world through his eyes, tracing his early life in the Hertfordshire village of Westwick, which belonged to St Albans Abbey. We relive his early education in the abbey’s school and his probable stint at Oxford.

There is much in this book that is strange to the modern reader: the medical treatise which recommends a patient be given an enema with unsalted goat-kidney fat; or Falk’s explanation of the intricacies of the astrolabe – a device for, among other things, measuring the height of a celestial body. But, there is also much that is familiar.

In other news: Joan Didion found her style writing captions for Vogue, Brian Dillon argues: “In Vogue, by the sixties, captions were surprisingly substantial pieces of writing, accorded what might seem a remarkable amount of editorial care. The captions Didion wrote make up a minor, telling aspect of the mythology around her work, though perhaps ‘mythology’ is the wrong word. It is a matter of style, where style is verifiable presence on the page. Didion is frequently described as an exact and exacting writer, her prose like a shiny carapace. At the same time, she has a reputation for being brittle and spectral, barely there. None of this adequately describes her prose. It is usually direct and declarative; it is filled with parallelisms and rhythmic repetitions; there is a wealth of concrete detail. Irony in her work consists largely of the plain statement of such detail, inflected by the innocent, mad, or bad-faith language of the people or institutions she is writing about. In a lecture at U.C.L.A., Didion said, ‘I’m not much interested in spontaneity. I’m not an inspirational writer. What concerns me is total control.’” (In the forthcoming issue of The American Conservative, John Wilson reviews Brian Dillion’s Suppose a Sentence from which this Didion piece is drawn.)

The Ford Foundation announces an “unprecedented $160 million-and-growing initiative called America’s Cultural Treasures, with substantial grants going to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) organizations across the country. The grants are, in most cases, the largest ever for the 20 recipients in the first round. Ballet Hispánico will receive $4 million, more than half of its $7 million annual budget.”

Katya Sedgwick revisits Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog: “It’s . . . the best reactionary work of literature ever written.”

What is math? “It all started with an innocuous TikTok video posted by a high school student named Gracie Cunningham.”

Agatha Christie turned 130 last week. The folks at FORMA rate her top 20 novels.

Tobias Cremer reviews Charlie Laderman’s Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order: “Based on careful archival research, the book covers a considerable timespan from the late-nineteenth century, WWI, and to the early 1920s. After briefly examining how and why the once-powerful Ottomans increasingly persecuted Armenian Christians, whom they began to consider as a potential ‘fifth column’ of European powers in the late-nineteenth century, Laderman’s focus thereafter remains on the American and British reactions. In particular, Laderman discusses how the Armenians’ plight rose to ever greater prominence in the American public debate and became a central preoccupation not just for American missionaries and philanthropists but also for policymakers, most prominently Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. In so doing, Laderman impressively weaves together numerous strands and actors shaping US foreign policy.”

Photo: Frosty evening on a Scottish farm in Trossachs

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