KtBlog

Feasting Foolishly
Anonymous, serious, busy modern society got you down? Well, the Middle Ages has just the remedy on hand. In the Notebook section of this month’s Harper’s, Alain de Botton has one of his quaint, pleasurable, and perhaps otherwise close to useless essays, this time on the subject of how we could learn a thing or…

The Crusades: Actually Not So Bad?
The sociologist of religion Rodney Stark is back (just in time for Medieval Week) with yet another in his always-controversial oeuvre, this time with a book about the very thing we all thought we could love to hate about Christian history: the Crusades. Our friends over at Patheos recently put up an interview with Stark…

Medieval Music Resounds in Brooklyn
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 7:30 – 9:30 pm St. Joseph’s Catholic Church 856 Pacific Street Brooklyn, New York All are welcome, as are donations On May 22nd, at one of Brooklyn’s most beautiful churches, come hear the passion and desire—both sacred and profane—of medieval Iberian song as it was meant to be heard. Killing the…

Turn off the History Channel and Read an Article
Whenever I see an ad for or flip past a showing of one of those History Channel “religion” documentaries—something about Revelation or Nostradamus or the Bible Code—there arises a feeling of all the mighty, righteous indignation my stomach can bring itself to squeeze out. I know, I should enjoy it, it’s just entertainment, like the…

Have You Heard of Rashi?
The day my essay, “The Self-Thinking Thought,” appeared on the New York Times blog Happy Days, I received a letter that went thusly: I read your blog on Anselm; quite interesting. Your name sounds Jewish, and although you said you are Catholic, do you have Jewish ancestry? What do you know about Rashi, the great…