Ora et labora: Pray and work. This directive has ordered the life of Benedictine monastics for centuries, each day’s rhythm of worship and toil shaping the soul toward love and…

David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour talk for a spell about the Old English poem “The Dream of the Rood,” digging into its particular extant texts and examining the strange and…

David Grubbs chats with Nathan Gilmour about the hymn of Caedmon, a poem from the Old English version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.

College teachers are often wont to crab about their students, and a frequent theme of such crabbing is the apparent lack of interest amongst students towards the business of learning…

So, another week, another feast for an Anglo-Saxon saint: February 2, the Feast of St. Chad. Don’t remember Chad? Oh, surely you recall those obnoxious little flecks of paper in…

In case my point was too vague in my post last week about dragon-slaying, this is what I meant.

Today, February 24, is the birthday of many people, obviously.* I have selected four whom I find especially interesting for personal reasons. Strangely, however, I see an order among them:…

I’ve always been a sucker for a good monster story. As a boy, I would browse through my parents’ books, especially the encyclopedias, and stop whenever I saw an illustration…

Today, February 16th, is the feast of St. Juliana in the Latin tradition. While the earliest lists of martyrs link her with Cumae (through birth), she is also associated with…

Today, the third of February, is feast day of St. Laurence (Laurentius) of Canterbury.  He was an early figure of the branch of Christendom we might style “Germanic”: St. Laurence,…