Today’s new posting to the Archived Articles section of the blog-website is

The Middle Ages and the Movie Age.

One of the reasons I sometimes wax nostalgic for the Middles Ages is for the religious spectacle. This was an age of the dramatic gesture–St Francis standing barefoot in the snow or the penitent Henry IV crossing the Alps barefoot while wearing a hair shirt. It is the age of the passion and mystery plays–rumbustious and beautiful actors with painted faces tromping the boards on portable stages with painted backdrops– gurning demons, nagging Noah’s wives, dreadful Judases and foolish apostles. It is the age of liturgical spectacle with jewel-encrusted chasubles, impossibly ornamented reliquaries, processions, pilgrimages, popes and priests, cardinals and curates all arrayed in their vestments or beggar’s robes as was their station.

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