Medievalish 3.1
Reading the books of the past in your new year
Dear friend,
One of my serious goals in this little newsletter is to help people encounter the works of the past, especially the medieval past. I normally do that by sharing ideas or texts or themes I’m currently reading and mulling over. But one thing I haven’t discussed much is method in approaching books of the past.
One of my best goals for 2023 was to keep reading older things that were not directly related to my project at hand. I read some absolutely brilliant poetry that way as well as some theology that I had heard of, but never tackled directly. One of the stranger things about my degree is that people often assume I was in a theology department, but I was in an English department! So I often feel like I’m doing a lot of theological catch-up and worming my way into texts in strange and roundabout ways. I am continuing this goal into 2024. One of the books I’m currently reading in that category is a volume of selected spiritual writings by the medieval theologian Hugh of Saint-Victor (more on him in a moment).
Would you like to read more old books this year? Maybe tackle a new genre, or an author you’ve long heard of but never dared to crack open? I thought I’d offer some of my best practices on approaching the works of the past, especially the premodern and early modern past, that I have learned over my decade and a half of reading really old and sometimes not very accessible books and snippets. Because let’s face it—picking up a collection of medieval sermons or early modern poetry is not the same and needs more intention than checking out the latest buzzy novel on Libby (which don’t get me wrong, I love that too and think it’s completely worthwhile! They just require different levels of effort).
Let your interests guide you. Do you feel like you “should” have read Augustine or Thomas Hardy or what-have-you by now, but just haven’t? Ignore that voice, unless you really want to read it. I have tried for a long time to read these “should” books and have discovered that unless there’s some skin in the game via reading it with friends or for a class, the neglected text will moulder away on my nightstand forever, a forlorn bookmark thirty pages in. Here’s what I have discovered: if the book is important enough, I will get to it eventually, with more desire. I just finished St. Augustine’s Homilies on the First Epistle of John, which I have owned for at least seven years. I kept halfheartedly trying it and then just stopping. But the day finally came when I needed it for something else, and then I read it all with so much delight, and really learned a lot. Instead, pick up something you are really interested in—if it’s worth it, the neglected book’s day will come, and you won’t lose steam on your old books reading project.
Relatedly: trust the process of what you find interesting and relevant. This could sound a little wild, but do not underestimate the movements of the Holy Spirit in certain books appearing in your life at certain times, even if they have been waiting in your to-read pile (or… three shelves, regarding my own pile 😳) for ages. Time after time, I have found that a book with wisdom or thoughts I needed, either in helpful resistance or in fruitful growth, was what in front of me catching my interest. I just needed to pick it up and give it my attention. This is also how I treat re-reading, which is never a waste of time. Follow your gut and see what happens. Keep your ears pricked up, and hear what others are reading and thinking around you.
Don’t worry if something will be too hard for you. I would never have read St. Thomas Aquinas if I had let my fear guide my reading. Do I understand him all the time? Absolutely not. Have I learned an incredible amount from giving him a shot, and reading helpful books by scholars alongside to enable deeper understanding? Yes. You won’t know until you try, and we often underestimate ourselves. Wisdom speaks beyond intellectual understanding. Feel free to stop, if it’s just not working.
Give yourself permission to skim sometimes. You might not want to skim really important sections, but a lot of older books have a mix of passages that just are not relevant or too culturally grounded or too deep in the weeds in an argument that you don’t fully understand. That’s ok. You can always go back after reading the full thing. It’s not the same as a conversation with a friend or a lecture. It will wait for you if you need it to. Take my current old book reading, from the twelfth-century theologian Hugh of Saint-Victor. My new friend Hugh wrote so beautifully of the life of charity. For instance, here’s a little gift to you, from Hugh, arguing for learning more about God:
Let us then see what we can do to attain the love of God, for He will integrate and stabilize our hearts, He will restore our peace and give us ceaseless joy. But nobody can love what he does not know; and so, if we desire to love God, we must first make it our business to know Him, and this especially since he cannot be known without being loved. For so great is the beauty of His loveliness that no one who sees Him can fail to love Him… Let us…therefore, inquire where God dwells, where His abode may be; let us interrogate His friends concerning Him.
Hugh of Saint-Victor: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V. (Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 48-9.
Lovely, right? But then Hugh spends pages upon pages breaking down the cubit feet of the Ark, the tropological and mystical significance of the amount of storeys in the Ark, and so on. I don’t skip these pages entirely—there are treasures in them—but I skim them quickly. I used to feel bad about that, but I’ve now realized that I get bogged down too easily—and then I give up, and would never have discovered the treasures. I trust that if I need to know more about the mystical number of cubits in the height of the several storeys, I know where to return. It will be waiting for me when I need it.
Follow the path of modern-day scholars, translators, or authors you like. I am reading Hugh because I really enjoy the work of Hugh’s translator, Sister Penelope Lawson, who was an Anglican nun working in the midcentury translating medieval Latin (she corresponded with C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton!). By reading her translations, I have read many absolutely beautiful monastic writers that I had not encountered in my own studies as a Middle English scholar. One of my new favorite medieval writers is William of St-Thierry, who I had never even heard of before following the path into medieval monasticism carved out by Sister Penelope.
If you can afford it, buy used classics and let them sit in welcome on your shelf, awaiting their moment in the fullness of time. Ok, this can easily become a bad habit, so don’t overdo it as I sometimes do. But seriously, if something looks interesting, buy it, or add it to a note that you won’t forget about or ignore, and let it sit there until you’re ready. You will be, someday.
Do you have reading goals for 2024? Do you have tips to add for intrepid readers of old things? Share them in the comments, if you want!
What I’ve been up to this month:
I have some exciting news to share that you may have seen on social media… my second book with Zondervan Reflective will be coming in Fall 2025! Tentatively entitled Ask of Old Paths, in it I ask, who are we called to be as people of God? What does our participation in the life of wholeness look like? One way into these questions is via the ancient language of virtues and vices. To modern ears, traditional Christian virtues and vices like meekness, gluttony, or sloth can feel historically complicated, confusing, or irrelevant. Yet in medieval writing, the language of the virtues and vices was vibrant, strange, and understood as essential to teaching ordinary people about the imitation of Jesus, taught right next to the Lord’s Prayer and the creeds. In Ask of Old Paths, I meditate upon the imagery and explanations of virtues and vices found in medieval poetry, art, and sermons (so many wonderful metaphors and examples: humility as the moon? patience as hammered gold?). Walking through each of the seven capital vices and their virtue remedies, I explore how these ancient words speak to our longing for the beauty of the life of love, for our own ongoing sanctification, and for individual and communal wholeness.
I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the Shifting Culture podcast & More to the Story podcast for Jesus through Medieval Eyes.
New episodes of Old Books with Grace return next week. I’m looking forward to conversations on early cultural Christianity & Flannery O’Connor!
What I’ve been reading this month:
Fiction: Just finished Daniel Mason’s Massachussetts ghost story & paean to nature, North Woods. Some of it was great, some did not captivate me so much.
Nonfiction: God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson. Loved every minute of reading it in that strange gap of time between Christmas & New Year.
Medieval/medieval-adjacent: I just finished St. Augustine’s Homilies on First John, and believe me, my dear paid subscribers, you will be hearing about it! 😍
A Prayer from the Past
A prayer from St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), the theologian, leader in the Oxford movement, poet, polymath, and Catholic cardinal. For me, this feels like a true heart-prayer for 2024:
I worship Thee, O my God, with all my best love and awe, with my fervent affection, with my most subdued, most resolved will. O make my heart beat with Thy heart. Purify it of all that is earthly, all that is proud and sensual, all that is hard and cruel, of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the time may have power to ruffle it, but that in Thy love and Thy fear it may have peace. Amen.
That last sentence! Wow.
Peace for your January,
Grace
P.S. Medievalish is free, and I’d be delighted if you shared it with a friend!
If you have enjoyed this newsletter, you may also like upgrading to a paid subscription to receive other essays scattered throughout the month on medieval and early modern books and thinkers. Plus, you directly support my writing and podcast projects! In the last month for paid subscribers, I’ve written about the history of nativity iconography, my own reading year, and a strange and compelling miracle tale from a medieval preacher’s handbook…
My dad just found a large collection of Shakespeare that used to belong to my grandfather. I’ve never read Shakespeare, but I’m going to this year!
I like your tips! I just finished Don Quixote and that is one old book I probably would not have stuck with if I hadn't been reading it with a student, haha! People keep telling me they love it, but no one comes back to tell me why...