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Welcome to my episode with medieval scholar Grace Hamman. Grace is a brilliant mind, kind soul, and passionate intellectual. I reached out to her because I breezed through her book Jesus through Medieval Eyes this past Christmas. It is a fascinating and accessible introduction to the bizarre, profound, and often contradictory spirituality of medieval people.
In this episode we speak about Christianity during medieval times, their complex views of women, sex, birth, and death, the spiritual relationship to fear and suffering, and the corruption of the church during its most powerful era. We compare modern cultural hypocrisies to those of the medieval age and speak about what wisdom we can gain from studying medieval culture. We talk about female hermits, and compare the complex views of womanhood in that time to ours. We also speak about the medieval relationship to art, the anonymity of artists, and the medieval veneration of beauty in comparison to modern utilitarianism. We also speak about the spiritual relationship to technology, and ways in which our destructive technological philosophies would be seen as incomprehensible to the medieval world.
I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Grace’s Links:
Website: gracehamman.com
Substack: gracehamman.substack.com
Podcast: oldbookswithgrace.wordpress.com/podcast
Instagram: instagram.com/oldbookswithgrace
Jesus Through Medieval Eyes (book)
Ask of Old Paths (book available for preorder)
Mentioned in this episode:
New York Times Trends for 2025 (gift link): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/style/trends-predictions-2025.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QU8._hpi.lUgnVZ_0f3Gp&smid=url-share
Music and editing by Simon Linsteadt: www.simonvictorlinsteadt.com
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