Good reading today at Circe: History all around us

Joshua Gibbs has posted his typical intro to a medieval history class on the Circe Blog. A sample:

"You learn about Pearl Harbor, Charlemagne, the age of Martyrs… the past gets closer and closer to you until you can’t really tell the difference between 1000 BC and yesterday. You learn about Charlemagne, you learn about yourself, your father, your children, the future. History is the human things, the eternal things, the always things, the omnipresent things. Charlemagne isn’t in the past. Charlemagne is in your blood. The study of Charlemagne isn’t the study of a man who was, it’s the study of a man who is. For the Christian, the past is above us, not below us. For the Christian, the past is not without us, the past is within us."

Worth a visit!

Quote for the Day: St. Louis on Food, Drink, and Clothing

"Of his meat he was so sober, that on no day of my life did I ever hear him order special meats, as many rich men are wont to do; but he ate patiently whatever his cooks had made ready, and was set before him....He put water into his wine by measure, according as he saw that the strength of the wine would suffer it....[he told me that] if I drink pure wine in my old age, I should get drunk every night, and that it was too foul a thing for a brave man to get drunk.

"He said that men ought to clothe and arm their bodies in such wise that men of worth and age would never say, this man has done too much, nor young men say, this man has done too little.  And I repeated this saying to the father of the king that now is [Philip], when speaking of the embroidered coats of arms that are made nowadays; and I told him that never, during our voyage oversea, had I seen embroidered coats, either belonging to the king or to any one else.  And the king that now is  told me that he had such suits, with arms embroidered, as had cost him eight hundred pounds parisis.  And I told him he would have employed the money to better purpose if he had given it to God, and had had his suits made of good taffeta (satin) ornamented with his arms, as his father had done." ~~ Sieur de Joinville, Memoirs of the Crusades