Aaron Crofut > Recent Status Updates

Started listening to the audiobook version. Sounds weird, but that's probably how most people in history learned it, so why not? Listening and reading are different modes and the focus tends to be different. In Leviticus now; St. Thomas Aquinas' explanation of the relation of these ceremonials to the New Law is helpful.

Quick skim of the replies concerning Aunilo and on Truth (skipping de grammatico altogether). Concerning Free Will and its application in On the Fall of the Devil are both very interesting and pertinent to me recently. St. Anselm was a good monk and looks at it like a good monk. To desire more than God wills is to desire to be a god oneself (and to destroy justice in the process while disappointing ourselves).

Finished the Proslogion. I appreciate the monastic style. This is not so much an academic question of "does God exist?" so much as a search for everything that is good, true, and beautiful, what that really means, and how we can attain it.

Finished the Monologion. A much better book than I had been led to believe. It's less "the greatest thing we can come up with is God" and more the fact that we see good in life, but different things are better or worse, so there must be a hierarchy of good. That implies a superlative, the best, which is God. That best must be existing (as existence both is and is good). The best good is the most beautiful, etc.

Not an easy read, to be sure, but interesting. Attempting to get to the Trinity with philosophy rather than as simply a tenet of faith. Has to be kept in mind that this is the meditation of a monk, with the purpose of coming to love God the better, rather than as a pure speculative text.

I'm reading the "Longer Text" for now. Nearly scared off this book by the Scivias, but very glad I kept it. It's been simply beautiful so far.

Of the four biographies of More that I’ve read, this one has made the best use of Utopia. Seriously considering rereading it after this.

“Henry VIII destroyed more things of beauty, and more things of promise, than any other man in European history”. (penned in 1936)

The contrast between the hope at the beginning of his reign and the result is breathtaking.

My fourth biography on More. This one seems to be the first modern one. I appreciate his spending the first tenth of this book examining the sources. The author already seems to have less personal animosity to More than Marius or Ackroyd, which I appreciate.

Part II is extremely technical; I regret not learning music well enough to follow this. Part III has really opened my eyes to beauty of William Byrd. Palestrina and de Victoria have been my focus over the last year, and while I knew Byrd was famous and highly regarded, I didn't get it. Now I think I do.

I greatly regret that my first notice of Mahrt was his obituary.

A great read so far. Mahrt was on some podcasts before his death earlier this year which are really worth listening to, as the guy knew his stuff and clearly loved it. Main themes: liturgy cannot be separated from its music, and order plays an important role in liturgy (the music, the hierarchy, the chants, all of it are meant to reflect the order of Creation in its beauty, worshiping the Creator of that beauty).

Traditional art of the East: the icon. Not personalized art, but a tradition. A spiritualized image that anyone familiar with the tradition can instantly grasp. In the west, that tradition is music. Interaction between tradition and development, but we have a cantus firmus to measure it by: the Gregorian chant; the Psalms the heart of that chant. Praying the entire psalter key to understanding the Mass propers.

I have read some strange things in my time. This one is up there.

I have been excited to read this for some time, and the introduction is very good. This woman was a dynamo and did more with 12th century tech than we can do with 21st. I am fascinated by her music.

I have finished. I have extensive notes. I can read none of them.