A few months ago, Ben and Will sat down with Dr. Linda Jones, Professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where she teaches medieval history. Dr. Jones is an expert in religious and cultural history of medieval al-Andalus and the Maghreb, especially on topics such as gender dynamics , Islam-Christendom encounters, and oratory practices. She is the author of The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge University Press, 2012), the first monograph to consider the significance of preaching in the medieval Islamic world.
We typically imagine women as having been entirely subordinated to men in the medieval world, especially in those contexts which were explicitly religious. However, Dr. Jones offers to us a striking counterexample. In the medieval Islamic world, she explains that women were allowed to preach, not in formal contexts, but informally. Even despite the lack of formality, their preaching still carried authoritative weight, one that was often expressed in exhortative form—encouraging listeners to undertake ascetic practices or to pray more fervently.
In addition to fascinating topics of cultural and religious practices in the medieval Islamic world, Ben and Will speak with Dr. Jones about the differences of teaching college students in the US versus Spain, the challenges of interpreting medieval manuscript handwriting, and the enduring importance of the humanities today.
In parallel with a certain popular celebration centered in the city of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the second day of February, in most Christian traditions, also marks the commemoration of the presentation of Christ in the Temple and the ritual purification of Mary. Due to the prominent role played by candles in the liturgical celebrations in the Latin tradition, the feast is commonly referred to as “Candlemas”.
The Presentation in the Temple (along with the text of the Nunc Dimitis). Taken from the Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry. Musée Condé, Ms 65, 63r. Via Wikipedia Commons. Public Domain.
For Ivo of Chartres, whose homilies on Advent and Christmas have short commentaries and translations elsewhere on this blog, his work In Purificatione takes the opportunity to reflect on the details of the liturgical celebration itself as a symbol of the moral imperatives of the Christian life. For him, the wax from which the candles are made represents the flesh of this life, but which also bears a light that illumines the shadows, echoing the Prologue of the Gospel of John. Carrying the candles in procession echoes, in a physical sense, the spiritual carrying of God accomplished through the imitation of Christ.
Interestingly, Ivo cites two short passages from liturgical texts. The first is taken from a version of the Exultet of Good Saturday, in which the celebrant, standing in front of lit candles, commemorates the bee as a symbol of the virginity of Mary. This verse, while it does not exist in the modern Roman rite, can still occasionally be found in use (for example, in this video of the Exultet intoned by a member of the Discalced Carmelites) [1]. The second passage is from a text of the feast of the Purification itself, in which Sion (i.e., the church) is commanded to adorn the bridal chamber in order to receive Christ. This text is well-attested as both a responsory and an antiphon in the manuscript tradition [2]. For Ivo, again, the spiritual meaning is clear: we are to adorn our hearts with virtues that we may have God dwelling within us.
The recourse to liturgical texts, at least for me, lightens the content by focusing more on the act of celebration, rather than emphasizing the grander themes of the economy of salvation and the final judgment found in some of his other homilies. The ultimate effect is almost to encourage a more active personal participation in the ritual on the part of his listeners, a suggestion to meditate on the texts and the actions of the liturgy and to apply the deeper, spiritual meaning in day-to-day life.
The translation and Latin text (Patrologia Latina) of the homily are available here.
Nick Kamas PhD in Medieval Studies University of Notre Dame
[1] For the full text of the Preface, categorized as the “Franco-Roman Version”, see Thomas Forrest Kelly, The Exultet in Southern Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 38.
A few months ago, Ben and Will sat down with poet, essayist, and translator, Dana Delibovi, to discuss her life and work. After dropping out of the doctoral program in Philosophy at Columbia University—subsequently earning a terminal master’s at New York University—Delibovi spent 45 years as an advertising copywriter while also working as an adjunct instructor of philosophy at Lindenwood University. In 2019, following the decision to retire, she began translating the poems of St. Teresa of Ávila—a longtime inspiration of hers—and didn’t look back. This culminated in the publication of Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila (2024).
For St. Teresa, the sharp disciplinary boundaries we draw today between philosophy, theology, spirituality, and poetry were far less rigid. Her work weaves together theological reflection, spiritual practice, and personal experience, so that the search for truth cannot be separated from interior transformation. True knowledge is knowledge of self and of God, which is arrived at not through detached inquiry but through an inward journey—one must venture the soul’s many “mansions.”
It is quite fitting, then, that her poems have found a translator whose encounter with Teresa’s work has itself been inseparable from her own life journey. Delibovi here conveys not only the riches of Teresa’s thought, but does so with the spirit in which Teresa surely would’ve wanted to be read, in a deeply serious and personal way.
In addition to St. Teresa’s work and Delibovi’s own life story, Ben and Will chat with Delibovi about a range of topics, including the art of translation, how we relate to the same texts differently throughout our lives, and more.
Thanks for listening, and be sure to stay tuned for more!
