medieval
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When the name Heloise is spoken, collective memory almost automatically turns to another figure: Pierre Abélard. Their love story, overwhelming, scandalous, tragic, has, over time, become one of the founding myths of Western romantic imagination. Yet to stop there is to betray precisely what makes Heloise an exceptional figure. For Heloise is not merely the
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Objects, as we know, travel through time. They retain something of us, something we chose to imprint so that our children, our grandchildren, and all those who come after us might understand who we truly were. Sometimes a single book, a line, a signature, a motto… is enough to cry out to the world, centuries
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Every year on October 31st, for the past thirty-six years now (at least in this earthly life of mine), I’ve heard people criticize the day of Samhain, or Halloween as it’s now called, in the most absurd ways imaginable. Some call it an evil day, devoted to the devil; others dismiss it as nothing more
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All my life I’ve heard people say: “What is this, the Middle Ages?” or “It feels like we’ve gone back to the Middle Ages,” whenever they want to comment on something absurd that makes us regress so much we turn into barbarians, puritans, God-fearing souls destined to die of the plague. And every time I
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“Treason! Treason!” These were the last words of Richard III on the battlefield of Bosworth, just before a blow struck him from behind, ending his life at only 32 years of age. In recent weeks I have deliberately chosen not to post anything, as my mind has remained fixed on an event deeply rooted in
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Once upon a time, there was a child, born around 1474 in Brittany, who, after the assassination of Richard III at Bosworth, lived at the court of the new king, Henry VII, as a trusted knight of the Tudors. He died in 1535, leaving behind a trail of whispers that still echo today: who was
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These past few days I’ve been in Bruges, and in the rare moments when I wasn’t forced to weave through crowds of tourists, I felt as though I were suspended in time. The strongest sense of this suspension came as I stood before the Hospital of St. John, founded around 1150, where the still waters
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There is something extraordinarily symbolic in the story of Elizabeth of York and her niece, Elizabeth I. Two women, same name, same blood. One at the dawn, the other at the dusk of the Tudor dynasty. And exactly one hundred years lie between them. Elizabeth of York died in 1503. Elizabeth I in 1603. A
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“Eroticism is the approval of life all the way into death.” Georges Bataille At the heart of every authentic erotic experience lies a desire that goes far beyond physical pleasure: an ancient, almost religious need for total union, for the dissolution of boundaries between self and other, between flesh and the invisible. Georges Bataille described
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“History is written by the victors.” And never has this phrase been truer especially when it comes to Richard III. For centuries, Richard’s name has been synonymous with tyranny, treachery, and cruelty. A deformed king, power-hungry, even capable of murdering his own nephews just to cling to the throne. This is the image etched in
Beyond Death 