Even today, the prevalent stereotype about medieval people is that they were superstitious, uneducated and, above all, muddy. The Middle Ages, to the modern mind, represent a time of cultural decline, violence and intolerance towards new ideas.
While it is always fruitful to compare “then” to “now”, however, we should not forget that it was also a time when most people were simply trying to live their best lives using whatever knowledge they had at their disposal and whatever perspectives they could develop.
Many of those questions, as it turns out, were not dissimilar to the things we still have to deal with – especially when it comes to the big, existential questions about life, the universe and everything. Whether they were wondering about the meaning of life, the existence of time, or our place in the greater scheme of creation: people around the year 1000 had many of the same doubts and questions that we still tend to ponder today – even if some of the answers they imagined, may seem a bit alien to us.
In this lecture, Rutger Kramer, assistant professor of Medieval History at Utrecht University, will take us on a deep dive into the sources (texts, images, manuscripts, etc.) at our disposal to shed light on some of the questions people asked about the world and the universe around them, and try to explain how and why they solved these the way they did.
2 August 2025
Castlefest Academy
This lecture is in English.
