Boguslawski: The Blossoming of Middle Ages

The Blossoming of Middle Ages (Villard's World)

(70" x 30" oil on canvas)

Alexander Boguslawski

(Image Supplied by the Artist)

About three years ago, I posted several blog entries on "Blessed Silence" and related icons, through which I became acquainted with Professor Alexander Boguslawski -- art expert as well as artist -- and learned a great deal from him about these icons. He graciously allowed me to post images of his art on my blog, and he hasn't fogotten our discussion, for he recently contacted me:

It's been several years since our discussion of Blessed Silence. Every so often I return to your fascinating blog to check what's going on. I'm happy to see you are doing well. I decided to send you the photo of my latest painting, The Blossoming of Middle Ages (Villard's World). It is a triptych, 70 x 30 inches, oil on canvas. Four months of work. You can see details on my website . . . . I hope you like it!

I do like it, and have therefore posted it above -- as readers will already have noted. For those interested in a larger image, simply visit Professor Boguslawski's website and scroll down the "Alphabetical List of Paintings" to find The Blossoming of Middle Ages. You'll also find some details and an explanation of the work:

The Blossoming of Middle Ages was created for a friend, a professor of humanities at Valencia College in Orlando. Since his doctorate dealt with medieval technology, and one of his favorite subjects was Villard de Honnecourt, the canvas is saturated with allusions to Villard and to Middle Ages in general. However, in addition to this, the painting includes my renderings of the Temptation of St. Anthony (on the left) and of St. Francis with Animals (on the right). For the monsters surrounding St. Anthony I used my imagination, but added a few creatures from Villard's Sketchbook: a griffin, a fly, a lobster, and a snail. For St. Francis, I included mostly real animals (with the exception of two wacky birds and a strange antelope-like ruminant. The other creatures were selected for their unusual appearance, their uniqueness, or their compositional flexibility. The major feature of the group is the purple dragon petted by the saint. In the center of the painting, at the bottom, we see the owner of the painting in red robes, sitting on a barrel filled with his home brew, Dragon Ale, and guarded by his favorite dog, Luke. In front of him are books related to Villard -- Portfolio, Le 'probleme' Villard, and Architector. In the hands of the owner is a book with my signature and date, as well as Villard's initials and some imaginary design. The stone masons working on the wall are inspired by medieval manuscripts as are all the carpenters with a hoist building a bridge from the monastery to the cathedral. It is important to notice on the facade of the cathedral gothic figures in the portal, the figures of kings and saints, the images of 'green men' above the doors, the labirynth on the wall, and various details present in many real gothic cathedrals. The monastery is romanesque and features a small garden attended by monks but based on the garden of the owner of the painting. A tiny figure of a flying monk alludes to the legend of Elmer of Malmesbury who, in 1010, supposedly made a pair of wings and flew from the Abbey's tower. More workers are shown building a small model of a church on the left. Bridges, windmills, water mills, a medieval gusli player and a burger discussing something with a lady in blue complete the story. Of course, many slopes of this imaginary town have faces hewn out of stone, one of my trademarks and favorite things to paint.

Very informative. And appropriate for my interests and this blog, given the prominence of art and technology in the life of Villard de Honnecourt, a thirteenth-century artist from northern France.

Professor Boguslawski notes "the images of 'green men' above the doors" of the cathedral (and a green man seems to be tormenting St. Anthony), and on his website, he has also posted a photograph of such a green man: "the green gargoyle from one of the French cathedrals."

I'm curious if these 'green men' had any connection to the Green Knight of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Or, for that matter, if there has been any influence on the Green Goblin of the Spiderman comics. Perhaps Terrance Lindall would know . . .

Rémi Brague's Longer Reply on "Cosmology as a Postulate"

Rémi Brague

(Image from Nexus Instituut)

Some readers might recall a previous post on a fascinating interview that the two medievalists Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego conducted with Rémi Brague as a sort of introduction to his book of essays, The Legend of the Middle Ages. In that post, I called into question the heading that I thought that an editor had provided. The heading, followed by the passage, came upon the heels of Brague's remark that for modern people, "Nothing in the physical world responds to man's ethical demands":

Cosmology as a Postulate

"To be sure, for premodern man, the presence of the world, which he felt as a kosmos, was not a model to be imitated in any literal sense. Pretending to believe this to be the case is unfair, as it might be amusing to explain by the use of Kant's concepts. The role of the cosmic order is analogous to that of the postulates of practical reason. Those postulates -- liberty, the existence of a just God, and the immortality of the soul -- are of no use as a basis for moral law, which is sufficient unto itself and draws its obligation from an intrinsic authority that it has no need to borrow from elsewhere. Such postulates serve to guarantee the possibility of the supreme Good -- that is, the agreement between what the Law demands and the order of the real world. One might say that the kosmos was less a model demanding conformity than an example that shows, from the simple fact that it exists, that ethical conduct is possible. The major difference between the premodern vision of the world and Kant's morality is that realization of the good is for Kant only postulated. It remains, so to speak, in the domain of faith and hope. For men of ancient and medieval times, on the other hand, the sovereignty of the good was already given in the cosmic harmony. One only need acknowledge it."

At the time that I blogged on this, I stated that a cursory reading of the passage seemed to allow for the heading supplied, namely, "Cosmology as a Postulate," but that a closer reading led me to think that Brague would reject the heading as utterly counter to his point. I commented as follows:

True . . . [Brague] says that "The role of the cosmic order [for premodern men] is analogous to that of the postulates of practical reason [for Kant]," but this is not the same as calling cosmology a "postulate." Kant's postulates of "liberty, the existence of a just God, and the immortality of the soul" all "serve to guarantee the possibility of the supreme Good -- that is, the agreement between what the Law demands and the order of the real world." The similarity is thus that "the kosmos was . . . an example that shows, from the simple fact that it exists, that ethical conduct is possible." But cosmology was not a postulate because "For men of ancient and medieval times, . . . the sovereignty of the good was already given in the cosmic harmony." Since it was already given, it had no need to be postulated.

Well, as things turn out, I was utterly wrong in my construal of Brague's words -- though I take comfort in the fact that I am accustomed by now to being wrong -- for I wrote to Brague last summer, inquiring as to his meaning, and he replied with a cordial email letting me know that he was currently on vacation in the hinterlands of France but that he would reply upon returning to Paris. Here is that more recent reply:

I am back in Paris, and not really twiddling my thumbs, for I'll have to resume teaching in three weeks. Nevertheless, I keep my promise: not being a gentleman, I must pretend to act as one. The title "Cosmology as a Postulate" is not to be laid at the door of some editor. I am responsible for it. What I meant is, more or less adequately, what follows: For ancient man, moral life did not require properly speaking the well-ordered character of the world, its deserving the name of a kosmos. There are ethical theories that draw the parallel between morality and cosmological phenomena, like Plato's Timaeus or the Stoics; but others do not even mention them, which does not prevent them from building a highly respectable moral teaching: the Atomists are a good example, although Aristotle deserves pride of place among those people. The orderliness and beauty of the physical universe was a not a reason for the Ancient man to do good and avoid evil; conversely, the hypothesis (a nightmare for the ancient world-view) of a total lack of order would not be an excuse for an unlawful behaviour. See Marcus Aurelius, quoted in Wisdom . . . , p. 76-77. In the same way, moral law, according to Kant, does not need a divine Legislator. What is needed is to postulate that morality and the happiness that morality makes us worthy of, but can't guarantee us, somehow meet. Nevertheless, the beautiful order of the world shows us that Being and Goodness coincide. Perhaps I should have compared the part played by the ancient kosmos with another Kantian doctrine, i.e. his christology. For Kant, Christ is not so much a model to be imitated (President Wilson's "What would Jesus do if he were at my place?"), but rather an example that shows us that absolute conformity to the Moral Law, i.e. holiness, is possible.

Appended to this passage was Brague's "hope that this will be helpful." Certainly, it helps me to understand his point -- namely, to understand that I had seriously misunderstood and that Brague's point was almost entirely the opposite from my understanding . . . a rather humbling experience, to be sure, but I often run up against my limitations. Fortunately, like a proper Clint Eastwood character, I do know my limitations. Or at least, I'm willing to recognize them for what they are: my limitations.

Anyway, if I do now understand Brague's point, it is this: the moral law would hold for the ancient philosophers even if the cosmos were to display no such order, much as the moral law would hold for Kant even if there had been no incarnation of the Son, but both the cosmos and the Son display an excellence that is not so much to be imitated as to serve as a demonstration that an exact conformity to God's law is possible. Allow me to apply this understanding to a passage from the Brague interview that I had previously quoted only in part:

In my Wisdom of the World, I began with four ideal-typical models: the "Timaeus" model (broadly speaking, the main current of ancient philosophy from Plato to Proclus, including the Stoics), Epicurus, "Abraham," and Gnosticism. Building on generally similar descriptions of the world, each of these proposes a different response to the question "What we are doing on this earth?" Are we imitating the beautiful order of the heavenly bodies; comfortably settling in on an island of humanity within an indifferent universe; drawing ourselves closer to the creator of a good world, but obeying his law or following his Son; or, finally, fleeing, not, as Mallarmé invites us, là-bas, but to on high, toward an alien God, escaping an imperfect or prison-like world? The ancient and medieval model, which held firm for a good millennium and a half, emerged out of a compromise between "Timaeus" and "Abraham." What interests me is not so much its description (even if I have had to pursue a description in some detail), but rather the problem posed by its disappearance with the modern age. It left us alone. Nothing in the physical world responds to man's ethical demands.

The medieval "worldview" -- a term designating a perspective broader than merely a 'view of the world' -- was an unstable compromise between Plato's description of a more-or-less perfectly ordered world and the Christian one of fallen-but-still-good world. That 'compromised' world served not as a model to be imitated but as an illustration that conformity with God's law was possible. With the modern age, this understanding of the cosmic order has collapsed, for the world does not seem to correspond, even as illustration, to our ethical needs.

I might need to obtain a copy of Brague's Wisdom of the World and read it carefully, comparing his views on the emergence of modernity with those of Hans Blumenberg in Legitimacy of the Modern Age.

Rémi Brague on Medieval Philosophy's Broad Influence

Rémi Brague Explains

(Image from Universidad de Navarra)

As some will recall, I recently re-read Rémi Brague's masterful Eccentric Culture, which motivated me to blog about it again. In doing so, I discovered a couple of interviews that Brague gave, and I blogged on a question raised in my mind by a passage in the longer interview, the one on The Legend of the Middle Ages.

I went so far as to email Professor Brague and inquire:

Pardon me for contacting you, for you do not know me, but I have a query -- I think a simple one.

I am currently re-reading your book Eccentric Culture and have blogged on it recently (as well as earlier), and I happened to read -- and then blog about -- the interview conducted by Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego for the collection of articles in The Legend of the Middle Ages.

In that interview, an editor (I suppose) has introduced the heading "Cosmology as a Postulate." Following this heading is a passage that suggests to me that the editor has misunderstood your point, for you seem to me to be saying that for premodern man, cosmic order was not a postulate but a given.

Have I read you correctly?

Of course, you may have no time for this query, and I will understand and accept if I do not hear from you.

But I did hear from him:

This was a real joy to receive your message. I must be brief: I am in a small community in la France profonde, i.e. in the sticks. Internet is available only in the town-house.

Thank you for your close reading of my stuff. I will have to postpone a real answer till September: I haven't my own books there, let alone their English translations.

Have a nice summer.

From the evidence provided by this email, I'd say that he must be a really nice man, and I now have something to look forward to. But I won't leave you with the merely autobiographical blog entry today (after all, this isn't really my vacation), for I want to share another passage from the longer interview on The Legend of the Middle Ages that left a vivid impression on me because of its implications as to why the West developed as it did:

In medieval Europe, philosophy became a university course of studies and a pursuit that could provide a living. It also supported a mass of untenured, garden-variety "philosophy profs," few of whom have left their names in the manuals, even though we can exhume their courses, which we discover to be full of surprises. But these were the men who made it possible for philosophy to make a profound impact on the minds of the jurists, physicians, and others they taught, hence for it to become a factor in society.

This is significant because philosophy's emphasis upon reason surely played some role in preparing the rational European mind for the scientific revolution but also because it held theologians to rational standard. Christian theology had always required philosophical grounding, but the middle ages institutionalized philosophical study and therefore, as Brague remarks, ensured that philosophy might have a broader influence on society, something that did not occur in Islamic civilization because philosophy was never institutionalized there.

Brague goes on to make the point that "'theology' as a rational exploration of the divine . . . exists only in Christianity," which stands as a considerably strong claim to make, but I'll leave you to read the interview if you want to know precisely why he holds this view. I will add that his point is similar to the point made by Pope Benedict XVI in his Regensburg lecture, namely, that the central significance of the "Logos" in Christianity was crucial to Christian theology's openness to reason.

I agree with the Pope and Brague on their point about the significance of the "Logos," but I also think that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation raised profound philosophical questions -- concerning, e.g., matter and spirit, temporality and nontemporality, spatiality and nonspatiality, etc. -- that needed to receive answers if Christians were to respond to questions posed by the non-Christian culture in which Christianity grew, especially since Christianity did not begin as a successful political and military power, could not force non-Christians to submit, and thus had to rely solely on persuasion.

Until Constantine, anyway.

Hellbender Salamanders: Etymology?

Salamander Alchemy

(Image from Wikipedia)

One longstanding, albeit erroneous belief about salamaders is that they can imperviously withstand the flames of even very hot fires, as I learned in my history-of-science days, thereby prompting my speculation yesterday:

I wonder if "hellbender" has some connection to old beliefs about salamanders. They were believed impervious to fire, able to live in flames, and therefore somehow linked to the devil. But I'm just guessing. Anybody know the etymology?

I've tried to find evidence, though the links are only tenuous, but here's some information from an online Medieval Bestiary:

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 10, 86): The salamander is a shaped like a lizard, but is covered with spots. A salamander is so cold that it puts out fire on contact. It vomits from its mouth a milky liquid; if this liquid touches any part of the human body it causes all the hair to fall off, and the skin to change color and break out in a rash. Salamanders only appear when it rains and disappear in fine weather. (Book 11, 116): It is fatal to drink water or wine when a salamander has died in it, as is drinking from a vessel from which the creature has drunk.

Augustine [5th century CE] (City of God, Book 21, chapter 4): If the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded, this is a sufficiently convincing example that everything which burns is not consumed, as the souls in hell are not.

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4:36): The salamander alone of animals puts out fires; it can live in fire without pain and without being burned. Of all the venomous animals its strength is the greatest because it kills many at once. If it crawls into a tree it poisons all of the fruit, and anyone who eats the fruit will die; if it falls in a well it poisons the water so that any who drink it die.

The site then helpfully links to images from bestiaries. One image from the Museum Meermanno (Hague, Netherlands) has a manuscript dating from 1450 that shows what appears to be a serpent in a tree offering an apple to a man:


The text, however, identifies this creature as a salamander: "Een salamandra vergiftigt de appels in een boom; een man eet een vergiftigde appel" (translation: "A salamander poisons the apples in a tree; a man eats a poisoned apple"). The Medieval Bestiary website describes the scene in this way:

Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25 (f. 43r) shows the salamander as a snake spiraling up an apple tree; the snake has an apple in its mouth, making the scene very similar to some manuscript illustrations of the temptation of Eve. A man holding an apple stands near the tree, a hand to his head and looking sick.

The belief that salamanders could live in fire, the remarks by Augustine about salamander-like souls in hell remaining unconsumed by hellfire, and the pictorial connection between salamanders and Satan all suggest that further investigation into the etymology of "hellbender" with respect to bestiary books and alchemical texts could prove fruitful.

Perhaps some Medievalist could supply more information?

Hans Blumenberg: "sitting on the dock of the bay wasting time"

Hans Blumenberg

"wasting time"

(Image from Suhrkamp Insel)

Hans Blumenberg has a lengthy Otis Redding moment in discussing the process by which curiositas came to be justified through its centuries-long trial in the Christian West.

I mentioned yesterday Blumenberg's argument that Augustine's radical application of "the lust of the eyes" (warned against in 1 John 2:16) to his critique of curiosity would logically lead to a rejection of the Ancient and Medieval assumption that the world was teleologically organized for mankind's benefit and thus was open to mankind's observation in the interest of knowledge appropriate to mankind.

Even the teleological assumption entailed at least a mild rebuke to curiosity, for teleology implies that the knowledge appropriate for mankind to obtain should be readily available in a cosmos oriented to human needs. Going beyond those needs into deeper knowledge was considered improper, as though one were a 'busybody', a 'nosy' person, and such knowledge would have the status of 'gossip.'

Augustine's 'gnostic' distrust of the cosmos, however, and its concomitant distrust of the senses, especially the eyes, as leading one astray and into a curious, time-wasting attention to empirical matters and a dangerous inattention to God at the expense of one's soul, should logically entail the rejection of belief in a cosmos teleologically arranged for mankind's benefit.

Although Augustine himself retained a place for useful knowledge, his implicit rejection of teleology worked itself out through such High Scholastic intellectual endeavors as Nominalism and thereby ultimately engendered the legitimization of curiosity as a part of a necessary human self-assertion against divine absolutism and therefore the right, contra Augustine, to "waste time":

Waste of time seems at first glance to be quite a superficial standard for the legitimacy or illegitimacy of posing purely theoretical questions. But in this criterion the conceptual pattern of curiositas reappears: In the boundlessness of his cognitive will, man denies his finitude precisely in his dealings with time by behaving as though he does not need to apply any measure or to bring forward any justification here. If the modern idea of science will be characterized by its forgoing an evaluation of its objects and a distinction between what is worth knowing and what is a matter of indifference, this will only be possible through the elimination of this very objection based on the finite time given to the subject, an elimination accomplished by the integration, through 'method,' of a potentially infinite sequence of inquiring subjects active in temporally extended functional complexes -- subjects whose individual lives and needs (in regard to truth) can be neither the point of nor the standard against which to measure the totality of knowledge to be realized.

To both the ancient world and the Middle Ages, a knowledge that neither related to nor could be made to relate to the capacity of the individual and his existential fulfillment was still an altogether remote idea. The basic idea of the teleological serviceability of natural objects that are available and can be singled out from the whole had excluded the possibility that only a knowledge directed at the whole of nature could enable man to assert himself in his personal existence both against and by means of nature. Only the metaphysical suspicion that nature could function without regard to man in its lawfully regulated processes makes urgent and necessary a knowledge of nature that can examine each state of affairs merely for its potential relevance to man and that must therefore reject the criterion of the 'appropriate expenditure of time' as a point of view associated with a teleological contemplation of the world. (Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pages 317-318)

Augustine's unwitting destruction of teleology, understood more fully in the Nominalist speculations of High Scholasticism, thus paradoxically engendered a legitimization of the very curiosity that he had considered illegitimate.

If Blumenberg is correct, then the rise of modern science -- and of rational Modernity generally -- results not from Christian assumptions about the rationality of God and his creation but from suspicions that this God and his creation are not rational!

But is Blumenberg correct?

Hans Blumenberg: "The 'Trial' of Theoretical Curiosity"

Sandro Botticelli, Augustine of Hippo

Studious, not Curious

(Image from Wikipedia)

Hans Blumenberg has a wonderful chapter in his Legitimacy of the Modern Age, titled "Curiosity Is Enrolled in the Catalog of Vices," which shows the significance of Augustine of Hippo in classifying "curiositas" as a vice.

As we saw yesterday, Aquinas accepted this classification but strove to justify inquiry as a virtue. Indeed, he opposes curiosity to studiousness in his Summa Theologica, for in the "Second Part of the Second Part: Question 166," Aquinas states in "Objection 2" that "studiousness is opposed to curiosity," a distinction that still receives serious attention today, as shown in an article by Alice Ramos, "A Secular Contract, A Sacred Calling" (pdf) for Pi Lambda Theta's journal educational HORIZONS (Volume 83, Number 4, Fall 2005).

Blumenberg situates Augustine's classification of curiosity as a vice within Augustine's turn away from Manichaean Gnosticism toward orthodox Christianity and argues that Augustine retained a Gnostic distrust in the cosmos as an intricate structure within which mankind can remain trapped. For the Gnostics, the trap was set by an ignorant demiurge (though in Manichaean Gnosis, this view is somewhat ameliorated, a point that Blumenberg apparently missed), whereas for Augustine's Christian theology, the problem lies rather in the fallenness of the cosmos, which can distract the curious man away from the proper attention to his salvation.

According to Blumenberg:

Curiositas is indeed a category applied in turning away from Gnosticism, but the world in which it can become a possible cardinal vice is no longer the cosmos that is open to man and symmetrically intelligible in all directions from the center but rather a sphere filled with Gnostic attributes in which man is [literally] 'eccentric' -- for nowhere in Augustine either does Stoic geocentrism play a role relevant to man's understanding of himself.

Augustine's world is not fulfilling but seductive, and curiositas is a 'temptation' (forma tentationis) in the double sense that to test oneself on and with what is resistant and uncommon (tentandi causa) is at the same time to be tempted (tentatio). In its extreme form this 'tempted attempt' of the appetite for experience and knowledge directs itself at God Himself, since even in religion there is hidden the attempt -- the 'experiment' with God -- to demand signs and miracles not as promises of salvation but merely to satisfy curiosity. In this attitude God is taken into service and made into a means to the enjoyment of purely worldly experience. This makes clear what it means when Augustine again and again insists in his thinking on a strict differentiation between enjoyment and usefulness, between frui and uti. He sees the basic character of the world in its utilitas [usefulness] as the instrumentality ad salutem [for salvation], whereas a fulfilled and fulfilling existential relation is only to be expected from the fruitio [enjoyment, delight] directed at God. The ordering principle of human life, which can be spelled out in the form of the ethical virtues, is fixed in the maxim that one should correctly distinguish between the usefulness and the enjoyment of things. At the same time there emerges a criterion for the positively evaluated attitude to which curiositas is contrasted: All theory is concerned with disclosing the instrumental relevance of the things in the world, the serviceability inherent in them. But this means that the Augustinian interpretation of knowledge of the world is no longer the 'pure' theory of Hellenistic philosophy.

Curiosity violates this ordering principle of use and enjoyment and betrays its content of disorder precisely by the fact that in its extreme and logical consequence (as Augustine defines it), it subjects even God to the criterion of utilitas, so as to be able to seek fruitio in the human self alone. (Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pages 312-313)

In short, curiosity as a vice overturns the established order of things by making God 'useful' for human beings 'enjoyment' of themselves and thereby distracting them from a proper concern with their salvation and entangling them in improper pursuit for frivolous knowledge of a world whose fallenness serves as a temptation to mankind's equally fallen mind.

Augustine is not the sole word on this subject, for we've already seen Aquinas put Augustine in his proper place. Moreover, the early Medival Christians were greatly concerned with knowledge and its transmission, as a recently published book promises to show:

No period in the intellectual history of North-Western Europe has been so formative as the early Middle Ages, when missionaries transferred the learning accumulated for centuries in the Mediterranean basin to recently founded centres of religious scholarship in the ever expanding Christian world. The aim of this scholarship focused, first and foremost, on a proper understanding of the Bible as God's Word and Nature as God's Creation. During this period the foundations of medieval learning were laid in the monasteries and schools by men from distant shores who considered it their calling to entrust this precious knowledge to future generations of indigenous scholars. In this process, Syrians ended up in England, Irishmen in Italy, and Anglo-Saxons in Frisia and Bavaria and thus helped build a common intellectual culture in Europe. Even though the memories of these missionaries were fed with vast amounts of reproducible knowledge far beyond the capacity of modern man, the most important means of storing and conveying knowledge was the written word stored in what was then modern technology: the parchment codex. The composition of these books reflect the extent and diversity of early medieval learning. Sometimes they contain a single work, but often enough they contain compilations of diverse material which at first sight shows little coherence to the modern reader, and rightly so. In a way such miscellanies are mini-libraries. Nevertheless, they are storehouses of wholesome learning in their own right; further study reveals a rationale in such collections that leads us to a monastic learning environment, in some cases even to the classroom. The present volume demonstrates how the study of texts and manuscripts combined opens up windows on the early medieval world of learning as represented by glossaries, proto-encyclopedias, biblical companions, hagiographical guides, didactic verse, or descriptions of the world in word and image. The essays demonstrate that scholars have too often concentrated on the study of single texts, but especially that the compilations of manuscripts and libraries reflect the kind of knowledge that was required of monks, ministers and missionaries for the contemplation, celebration and promulgation of the Christian message.

Such is the promise contained in the blurb for Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, a book of articles edited by R.H. Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker as book 9 in the Mediaevalia Groningana New Series (Peeters Publishers).

Clearly, then, the early Medieval Christians, perhaps despite Augustine, were greatly 'curious' about the knowledge amassed over the centuries of the then fading Graeco-Roman world and were transmitting it to northwestern Europe through a process in which "Syrians ended up in England" -- though this sort of intellectual exchange was soon to be cut off by Islamic conquest of the Near East.

But this is enough heavy reading for today, and for those who wish to indulge their idle curiosity, feel free to visit this site to satisfy your ocular and aural desires both. For those who wish not to do so, consider this a test of your resolve and do not go there.