Introduction

  • Linda Tarte Holley
Chapter
Part of the The New Middle Ages book series (TNMA)

Abstract

Details of the measurable world of the late medieval period drew the attention of the military strategist, clockmaker, stonemason, rhetorician, woodcarver, engineer, clothmaker, politician, ecclesiast, shipbuilder, chronicler, architect, weaver, embroiderer, scribe, glazier, city planner, roofer, notary, carpenter, chemist, illuminator, farmer, cartographer, sailor, even poet and storyteller. All contributed to the development of systems of measure and logic that made craft possible, marketable, delightful. England’s fourteenth-century age of reason is characterized by the now generally acknowledged perception that numbers and accounting shaped the national enterprise.1 This assertion is not surprising, given what we know about the influence of mathematics from the East and, moreover, what the Catholic church taught as fundamental to God’s illuminating power as the designer/craftsman of the universe. However, these two epistemological urges appear to be at odds with each other: one arguing for knowledge by accounting for what we can see and measure, the other claiming knowledge in the unaccountable light of faith in what we can neither see nor measure. For all these productive and practical applications, then, medieval mathematics and the sciences also furnished the pedagogical index for charting the course of the imagination beyond material strictures and structures. Chaucer, the Perle-poet, and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing celebrate and exploit this gap as a platform for seeing from the center—in the light of what we might know from where we stand.

Keywords

Thirteenth Century Fourteenth Century Material Space Walnut Shell Millet Seed 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

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© Linda Tarte Holley 2011

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