Tag Archives: Augustinian
Augustinians and Capuchins and Sacramentines, Oh My
We thought we had the thickest fog ever two days ago, but we were wrong. Today’s fog was thicker yet. But this time, after a short walk, we were above the fog, on a ridge of land jutting out from … Continue reading
Crossing the Alps with Nothing but a Cloak, Staff, and Sandals
The people of the Middle Ages were not fond of mountains. It takes a leisured class with energy to waste and life to spend to appreciate inaccessible rocks where nothing grows, places where it is always cold and snowy and … Continue reading
Mindless Miles to Memmingen
After a very cold night—the heating gave out halfway through, which I guess qualifies as another “authentic” sort of experience, though authentic wouldn’t have involved any heating in the first place—we trudged off along the canal again. Boring as ever. … Continue reading
Rats, Walls, and Needlemakers: Welcome to Late Medieval Cities
Thomas Hobbes’s famously depressing description of life in a “state of nature” as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” has often been applied to describe life in the Middle Ages. From our vantage point, sitting on sofas in climate-controlled homes … Continue reading
Luther Was Not a Monk
The decidedly urban character of Erfurt meant another important thing for our story: the presence of friars. Luther was not a monk, properly speaking, but a friar or better a hermit of Saint Augustine. He’s responsible for this error, as … Continue reading
Why Luther Went to Rome
Motivation is one of the most difficult things to determine, even for people who are alive, as any therapist will tell you. The shelves of Luther biographies have accumulated more than their fair share of psychoanalysts. And not without reason. … Continue reading
Where Luther Slept
We can’t know with any great certainty where Luther stepped for each of the 1500 km he walked during the six weeks of his southward journey. And even if we did, the chances that we could still walk in his steps would be pretty slim. He would have kept to major roads—really only muddy cart paths at the time. The problem is that many of these have become today’s roads and highways: hardly routes conducive to a pleasant walk.
We can know with a bit more certainty, however, where he laid his head at night. Continue reading
