Sublime

Oswald’s historical significance is greater even than the sum of his parts. He forged a hybrid culture of Briton, Irish, Scot and Anglo-Saxon which gave rise to a glorious age of arts and language symbolised by his foundation of the monastery on Lindisfarne and the sumptuous manuscripts later crafted there by Northumbria’s monks. His political lega

They did not wish to impose mortification81 on the man of wealth, but the use of his means for necessary and practical things. The idea of comfort characteristically limits the extent of ethically permissible expenditures. It is naturally no accident that the development of a manner of living consistent with that idea may be observed earliest and m

C'est entre sa quarantième et sa cinquantième année qu'Érasme de Rotterdam atteint le zénith de sa gloire : depuis des siècles l'Europe n'a pas connu de nom plus illustre. Ni celui de Dürer, ni celui de Raphaël, de Léonard de Vinci, de Paracelse, de Michel-Ange, ou de n'importe quel autre de ses contemporains n'est prononcé à cette époque avec auta

he would sit down each day to write himself notes about restraint, compassion and humility. He used stoicism to create an empire.

His daughter Eanflæd was brought up, also in exile, as a Christian in the courts of Kent and then of Dagobert I in Paris.35 Her experience of sophisticated Frankish politics was to play a key role in the development of the Northumbrian state.