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Ancient Wisdom or New Age Nonsense?
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16515 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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11 / 1989 |
3,744 Words |
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Robert Royal
Robert Royal is a vice president at the Center for Ethics and
Public Policy. |
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN, 1098-1179
A Visionary Life
Sabina Flanagan
New York: Routledge, 1989
221 pp., $29.95
The Middle Ages continue to fascinate many people in the modern world in spite of a generally uninformed current of thought that assumes something may be dismissed by merely branding it "medieval." In addition to stories set during this period, like The Name of the Rose or Ladyhawke, a subtle current of chivalry and medieval legend has found wide popularity in films as seemingly modern as Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and several others. Something in the Western psyche still resonates to the blending of religion, mysticism, politics, knight errantry, courtly love, adventure, and the wonders of nature we associate most closely with the High Middle Ages--even when the interest is clothed in contemporary garb.
In part, the renewed appreciation of things medieval is a reaction against modern industrial societies. Medieval life, whatever else may be said of it, was lived close to nature with only the simplest of human contrivances. It often reflected an organically articulated society, composed of reciprocal rights and duties binding nobles and peasants together, that appeals to our sense of radical loss of community. The formalized relations of men and women also seem to speak to those of us dazed by modern sexual indeterminacy.
In reality, medieval societies meant a good deal of dirt, discomfort, and early death to most of those then
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