Quotes About Medieval

Another advantage enjoyed by small farmers in the Dark Ages arose from the adoption in the sixth century of new farming technology: the heavy plow, often mounted on wheels. Used in tandem with an improved harness that allowed peasants to employ multiple oxen, the new technology made it much easier to clear forested land in Northern Europe.19

The history of the Middle Ages is filled with examples of prominent people fulfilling pledges that would seem ridiculous to us. In many cases, the actions proposed involved no objective connection to any benefit other than a vivid demonstration of the importance those undertaking them placed upon the vow itself.

The scriptoria of the Benedictine monasteries can be understood as an alternate technology to printing presses, which did not yet exist. Costly and inefficient as the scriptoria were, they were practically the only mechanism for reproducing and preserving written knowledge in the feudal period. 3.

The capacity to mass-produce books was incredibly subversive to medieval institutions, just as microtechnology will prove subversive to the modern nation-state.

Yet it should not be forgotten that construction of churches and cathedrals helped create and deepen markets for many artisanal and engineering skills. In the same way that military spending of the nation-state during the Cold War unintentionally helped incubate the Internet, so the building of medieval cathedrals led to spin-offs of other kinds, the incubation of commerce. The Church was a principal customer of the building trades and artisans.

One of these days we need to get Weber locked in a room with some nice torture devices. I'm ready to go medieval on her.

Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!

It is true that the reign of his father, Henry VII, had already seen many modifications in medieval costume. The line, instead of being vertical, was now horizontal; the shoes, instead of being excessively pointed, became broad-toed, as if to echo the new style of architecture with its flattened arch. Ladies' headdresses ceased to be replicas of Gothic pinnacles and began to resemble Tudor windows.

The next time somebody announces that he plans to get Medieval on your ass, tell him you're going to get Renaissance on his gonads.

Many of the things we think we know about heaven are half-baked versions of the truth, influenced more by ancient philosophies, the medieval imagination and pop culture than by what the Bible actually says. How, then, did the Christian story of heaven and earth come to be so misunderstood?

She, I thought, was very beautiful, in an unsettling, almost medieval way which would not be apparent to the casual observer.

Well, get the coffer out, said Tobie roundly. You find his clean clothes and I'll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I'll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem?

Just as the medieval church cut off the congregation from participating in the sung worship of the service, today many well-meaning Christian leaders have reconstructed a sung worship wherein congregational participation does not matter.

Hence King's Messengers and all that. In medieval days you gave a fellow a signet ring as a sort of open sesame. 'The King's Ring! Pass, my lord!' And usually it was the other fellow who had stolen it. I always wonder why some bright lad never hit on the expedient of copying the ring—making a dozen or so, and selling them at a hundred ducats apiece. They seem to have had no initiative in the Middle Ages.

Buddhist cosmology is a spiritual legacy of the past, yet it remains a force capable of stirring the imagination of people today. Like old ceremonial garments no longer worn, it retains an attraction for us and can transport our minds to the spiritual world of ancient and medieval people, in the same way that the Greek myths, though they have lost their significance as a religion, continue to maintain their hold on our imagination.

A large armored knight exoskeleton

The medieval world then is one in which not only is the scheme of the virtues enlarged beyond an Aristotelian perspective, but above all in which the connection between the distinctively narrative element in human life and the character of the vices comes to the forefront of consciousness and not only in biblical terms.

The philosophers of the Middle Ages demonstrated both that the Earth did not exist and also that it was flat. Today they are still arguing about whether the world exists, but they no longer dispute about whether it is flat.

I was born on September 30, 1939, in Rosheim, a small medieval city of Alsace in France. My father, Pierre Lehn, then a baker, was very interested in music, played the piano and the organ, and became, later, having given up the bakery, the organist of the city. My mother Marie kept the house and the shop.

In Peter Ackroyd's book 'London: The Biography,' he describes the route of the medieval wall that enclosed the original city. Take the book and follow it from the Tower of London via the Barbican to Ludgate Hill. You experience the real history of London.

My parents took me to a movie, and I remember wanting to sit apart from them for some reason. I wanted to be a big boy or whatever. I remember looking up on that screen. It was a movie about medieval knights. All I remember is saying, 'I want to do that. I want to make movies.'

Religion is all good, but we are almost back to medieval times now, where we are obsessed with going into religious wars and electing our politicians based on their religious statements.

I live in a house that was built in 1480. It has a moat around it. It is like a little baby castle.

Maimed but still magnificent... Europe's mightiest medieval cathedral.