Internal Assessment

As much as I would like this experience to continue—though perhaps Münster’s weather this week is an indication that it should come to an end: rainy and cold (60’s Fahrenheit)—my days left in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar are fast dwindling. On Tuesday past, my neighbors at the dorm had a farewell barbecue for me (fortunately, the rain held off until later in the night); last night, Jennifer Burkart and her husband, Jörg, hosted me, along with the Hoyes and my friend Timon, at their house for another farewell dinner; this morning I delivered the last part of my presentation on my work to the Hildegard seminar I have particpated in this semester, which itself met today for the last time. All good things must come to an end, or so I’ve been told. Before my time here fully runs out on Tuesday morning when I board a flight back to the States, however, I would like to evaluate and assess my work this year from a more concrete perspective than my musings offered earlier this week.

The Bells

As I enter the final full week of my time here in Germany, it is only natural that I should be found in a pensive and reflective mood; as I’ve already noted some weeks ago, I will certainly miss this town.Later this week I will put together a post that reflects more concretely on my work this year; today, I would like to address a question that has often been put to me in recent weeks, namely, what will I miss most about being in Germany?

The Abbey of St. Hildegard

Since North Rhine/Westphalia is a Catholic part of Germany, the week before last, being Whitsunweek (the week of Pentecost), was an official university holiday—their version of a mid-semester break, I suppose. Although my class schedule is hardly strenuous, and my free-time that week hardly greater therefore than normal, I nevertheless decided to take the opportunity to visit for a few days the Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, a small town near Rüdesheim, on the northern bank of the Rhine river west of Mainz.

Two years ago, on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday of 2006, I had the opportunity the first time to visit the Abbey, though, because of the impromptu nature of that first visit, I was forced to stay in a hostel in Mainz and commute each day. This time, I thought to plan far enough in advance to secure several days in the guest quarters of the Abbey.

Thus, I boarded a train that Tuesday morning, and though it would have been faster to take an express train to Frankfurt and then connect down the river, I chose a more scenic route that took me first to Koblenz, and after changing trains, directly along the river upstream to Rüdesheim. By mid-afternoon, I stood on the train platform of Rüdesheim, and began the half-hour walk up to the Abbey, situated on the hill above the town. After wending through the narrow, tourist-crowded streets of Rüdesheim, one eventually comes out above the town but below the Abbey, for between then stand some of the Abbey’s many acres of grapevines; this Abbey is one of the last of the monastic wineries in this, the heart of the Rhineland’s vineyards. The last time I visited, it was the cold of winter, the vines lying bare under a soft dusting of snow; now, their green foliage was bright and young, the first buds of the grape flowers just starting to open. Though the weather that afternoon was perfect, the burden of my pack as I trod the paths through the vines left me sufficiently drenched in sweat upon arrival at the Abbey’s gates to require a bit of a break before actually ringing the bell at the gatehouse.

Though standing in the tradition of the abbey founded by St. Hildegard herself in the 1140’s, the modern estate is not, in fact, the same foundation. The community of women at whose head Hildegard found herself in the 1140’s had grown up around St. Jutta of Sponheim, an anchoress at the Disibodenberg (Mount St. Disibod), a men’s foundation a little to the south of Bingen, up the river Nahe. Finally, having outgrown their quarters and on the instructions of the voice of the “Living Light” that guided Hildegard throughout her life, she moved to separate her community from the monks and found a new house in the town of Bingen, on the southern bank of the Rhine, about fifteen miles downstream from the Disibodenberg. Though at first opposed by several fronts, Hildegard eventually prevailed, and by ca. 1150, she and her nuns were established at the Rupertsberg (Mount St. Rupert). Yet, the community continued to grow, and eventually, she was forced to establish a daughter house across the river in Eibingen. The main house of the Rupertsberg was, alas, destroyed in the Thirty Years’ War, and the Eibingen house heavily damaged, and what that war did not destroy, the Napoleonic secularization confiscated. Yet, the spirit of Hildegard’s work was not to be deterred: at the turn of the 20^th century, a group of nuns founded a new house in Eibingen, a few hundred meters up the slope from the foundations of the old daughter house; and thus, an Abbey of St. Hildegard has grown up to carry on the traditions of the “Sibyl of the Rhine”, more than eight hundred years after her death.

After checking in at the Gatehouse, I was given a set of keys and lead around to the guest dormitories; unlike some abbeys and cloisters that are completely open to visitors, much of the Abbey of St. Hildegard, being the private areas of the cloistered nuns, are closed off to the public, seen by none not in habit. After bidding the sister who showed me to my room farewell, I contentedly removed and unpacked my bag, and took stock of my quarters. While the decoration might be considered spartan or even severe by those used to finer accommodations, I found the simplicity of the room appealing. The bed, being not too comfortable, was nevertheless sufficient; the bathroom, while small, yet needn’t have been any larger; the desk, on the other hand, was large and the lighting good; and best of all, the rocker was most perfectly suited to the reading that I had planned.

Yet, though I had brought a certain stack of books (mostly on Hildegard) to wile away the time, I had not come to the Abbey with any intention of imprinting my own schedule upon the time. Rather, I was seeking to envelop myself in a rhythm not of my own fashioning but rather that of the life of the nuns—the rhythm of ora et labora, “pray and work”, as embodied in that rule laid down some fifteen centuries ago by the hand of St. Benedict. I was leaving the world, as it were, even if only for a few days, leaving behind the hustle and bustle of everyday life (perhaps best exemplified by that nexus that seems to rule so many of our lives today: the personal computer), and embracing that lifestyle of simple service to God.

Yet, despite the fact that it is a lifestyle of καιρός and not χρόνος, it is a life that is nevertheless regimented—but the beats of that regimen are the very essence of that special rhythm, for the Benedictine life is structured around the services of psalm-singing, readings, and prayers that make up the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours. During the regular days of the week (for on Sundays and high feasts they follow a more elaborate liturgical schedule), the nuns arise at half past five each morning to sing Matins; although it was an option, and each of the mornings the bells calling them to the church at the appointed hour did rouse me, I nevertheless, weak as I am, chose to go back to sleep for another hour. Thus, the beginning of my days at the Abbey was marked by the call to Lauds at 7:30, followed directly by the Holy Mass. Only after breaking our fast properly by supping of the Body of Christ did the guests gather in the guest refectory for breakfast. The next point around which the day was structured was the mid-day prayer at noon, for which the nuns that week had chosen to sing the office of Nones; lunch followed. The bells would toll again to call us to Vespers at 5:30 in the afternoon, directly after which we would take our dinner. Finally, at 7:20, we would gather once again in the church for the singing of Compline, followed directly by the singing of Vigils.

Furthermore, I should note that the nuns of this particular Abbey sing each of the hours, with their appointed psalms, in the same way that Hildegard’s companions did eight centuries before them—in the same language (Latin), and to the same chant. This was the rhythm of my days at the Abbey, and it was one that I was sorry to leave that Friday.

I finally had the chance to meet some of the other guests at dinner that night; over the simple fair of bread and butter, with some meats and cheeses and a pasta salad, we made each other’s acquaintance, chatting away in German about what it was that brought us to the Abbey. There was the woman seven months’ pregnant, taking a few days at the Abbey to recollect herself; the Protestant school teacher in her early thirties who had nevertheless maintained the practice since her university days of visiting the Abbey on vacations a few times each year; the petite Italian-German Catholic in her fifties who was an amateur expert in Hildegard’s herbal and natural medicines; the recently retired professor of music from Munich who had for years now served as a tutor for the nuns in their Gregorian chant; and then there was the slim, silent woman with red hair and glasses sitting at the end of the table. As we all settled back down with bowls of pudding at dessert, she finally piped up.

“I’m very sorry,” came her lilting Scottish voice, “and I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t speak any German.”

“Not a problem; we’ll speak English for a bit, then,” I replied. A look of great relief spread across Joan’s face to discover a fellow English speak in the lot. Yet, not to be left out, several of the others joined in according to their various abilities.

After clearing our dishes to the wash cart and making our way out of the refectory back into the courtyard of the Abbey church, Joan and I were joined by Tina, the German school teacher, whose English was, in fact, as good or better than my German (she had lived in an international dorm during her days at the University of Heidelberg, where English was often the language held most in common by the many nationalities). Our trio quickly became routine, forming a company in which to share the experiences of the next few days.

Thus ran our days, structured around the anchor-points of the bells that summoned us to each of the hours, our threads woven sometimes singly, sometimes together, into the tapestry of both individual and common experience. In the mornings after breakfast would be a nice, long walk, on Wednesday alone and on Thursday with Joan and Tina, up and around the top of the valley ridge, through the vineyards and the pastures, the fields of rape and the sheep paddocks. Here, Joan and I pose beneath a wonderfully-shaped tree that reminded us strongly of an ent. Afterwards, I’d find a spot on a bench in the courtyard of the church, passing the time with the pages of one of my books.

After lunch, I’d escape from the bright mid-day sun for a few hours in the rocker in my room, my books again before my eyes (though sometimes, a bit of a nap would accompany them). Later in the afternoon, our trio would come together again for a bit of an excursion from our hill-top refuge; on Wednesday, it was a visit to the parish church of Eibingen. Built over the foundations of the old daughter-house of the Rupertsberg, the church contains the remains of St. Hildegard, encased in a bejeweled casket of silver and gold, glittering in its display case behind the main altar. The church, which was destroyed by fire in the 1930’s, has been rebuilt in a thoroughly modern fashion; propriety will keep me from saying anything more on its art and architecture.

Our Thursday afternoon excursion was a bit more expansive: passing through the town, we came to the banks of the Rhine itself and clambered aboard one of the boats that cruise up and down this famous stretch of the river between Mainz and Koblenz so charmingly known as the “Romantic Rhine”. Indeed, the romantic notions that in the 19^th century drove the revival of the castles that dot the landscape seemed to be with us a bit that day, too, for the weather turned briskly stormy, the dark clouds rolling in with peals of thunder and splashes of rain spitting down upon us, the wind whipping along fiercely—yet, as any good Romantic would, we braved the weather (which forsooth was not so fierce nor so wet as to actually hinder us), reverently experiencing the sublimity of nature’s power.

Our boat’s particular charge was to travel about two hours round trip downstream and back up, highlighting some of the inspiring, oft-romantic castles that are scattered high above the banks on this most scenic section of the majestic flood. Some of them, like the Castle Ehrenfels, were true medieval fortifications that lie today in ruins, victims of later, more brutal methods of war (built in the 12^th century, the Ehrenfels was destroyed in the seventeenth). Others, though their first foundations might be medieval (like the 9^th century nucleus of the Castle Reichenstein), were continually rebuilt and expanded, often taking their final forms in the 19^th century as nobles, no longer in need of fortifications, nevertheless romantically took up the mantles of their medieval forebears. You may notice, for example, the neo-gothic chapel attached to the side of the Castle Reichenstein; the building continues to be used to this day—as a bed and breakfast.

The mixture of our company—Tina, Joan, and me—and our respective faith backgrounds added an additional layer to the complexity of our interactions. Tina, a Protestant, has nevertheless been coming to the Abbey for periods of vacation for years now and has developed close relationships with several of the nuns (as well as with the Italian cook who, alas, recently retired). And yet, although she attends each of the liturgies around which the Benedictine experience is structured, she noted her dissatisfaction with the Catholic form of the Mass; the focus in Protestant worship is on the reading and interpreting of Scripture, an activity she found lacking in the Catholic service, for ferial (week-day) Masses in Germany rarely contain a homily (though the priest will often offer a few introductory remarks at the opening of the service either illuminating the day’s readings or explaining the significance of the saint whose day it is). Joan, who was raised Protestant on the religious frontiers of Scotland—where the lines between Protestants and Catholics first begin to be drawn up, though with a cordialness foreign to the rougher relations found in Northern Ireland—no longer identifies with a particular Christian denomination and says that, if pressed to give it a name, her spirituality would align most closely with what one might call Taoism. Thus, the call to hospitality that is a hallmark of the Benedictine way of life allows for the extraordinary crossing of paths of many faiths; and while both the nuns and I certainly pray that God might work His grace for the conversion of the hearts of those who meet Him in the Abbey’s quiet confines, the focus for all of us is not the strict work of active evangelization but rather the via passiva of an encounter with other humans who, despite their various backgrounds, nevertheless sense the restlessness common to all humanity: et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te (St. Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1).

Unfortunately, this quiet interlude—a restive pause for weary pilgrims—came all too soon to an end, and Friday came, a day of departures. Joan left shortly after breakfast to catch a train to Passau to visit her son, who lives and works there as a translator; her farewell promise was to call again at the Abbey, and by that return to have learned some German. Though I was not to depart until the afternoon, I had to pack up and remove my luggage to the office in the Gatehouse in the morning to allow for the cleaning and preparation of my room for its next guest. I spent most of the morning, therefore, in the Klosterladen (“Cloister Shop”), browsing its many wares. I bought some herbal tea (by which Joan swears) for my mother and grandmother; a bottle of wine for a friend in Münster; and various postcards and notecards bearing images of the Abbey and its surroundings, or of some of the more famous illuminations from the manuscripts of Hildegard’s works.

Finally, my attention turned to the bookshelves. I had been hoping that they might carry, in addition to the various translations into German, English, and Italian, the actual critical editions of the Latin texts of Hildegard’s works, published over the course of the last two decades in various volumes of the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, a many-volumed series, published by Turnhout in Brepols, that is making its way through all of the important works of the Latin Middle Ages—a feat last attempted by the indefatigable Abbé Migne in the 19^th century, whose Patrologia Latina, though comprised of often lackluster and even erroneous editions, is still all too often our best (or even only) collection of so many medieval texts. I was hoping to add the CCCM editions, so well-known in their orange cloth bindings, to my collection of books, though knowing full well that they come not cheap—indeed, no normal bookshop, nor any of the various Amazon websites, carry them; the only recourse is often to antiquarian websites where prices quickly exit any reasonable range for my pocketbook. Alas, however, the bookstore did not keep them in stock (however expensive they might have been, I was hoping to find them at least conveniently collected in one place). I therefore contented myself to spend a still-significant amount of money filling my bag with various other books of Hildegardiana in both English and German, acquisitions that I know will very quickly justify their expense in the course of my studies.

As much as I was clinging to my time at the Abbey, however, those last remaining hours soon slipped away, and I found myself bidding farewell to the remaining guests at lunch and, after a few more fleeting moments caught on a bench under the eves of the gatehouse, I hoisted my pack upon my shoulders, with a large bag of my recent acquisitions in my hand, and made my way slowly down the mountain. I stopped in for one last look at the parish church of Eibingen, to make my farewells to Hildegard’s bones (as I had done before my departure two years previously), and to light a few candles for my special intentions. Though many of my prayers from two years ago had been answered and the requested guidance given, I had both some left to reiterate (the same petitions that, I imagine, I shall offer, in one form or other, until the day I die), and others to set anew before God, through the special intercession of His saints.

As I sat gazing out of the train window as the Rhine river zipped by on the way back to Koblenz, I fell again into a contemplative mood, searching with those inner eyes and ears that Hildegard so often mentions for one of those keys to unlock the experiences of the past few days; or rather, as is so often the task of the scholar, to find that one thread that runs through the whole tapestry, tying the disparate parts of random experience into a whole, meaningful picture. What, in hindsight, could I discern of the underlying meaning and structure of my visit? Just as the chanting of the canonical hours was the framework upon which was built the course of each day in that religious life, so also I was looking for the essence of that skeleton that made sense out of the ephemeral flashes of momentary experience.

I will not pretend that I had any great insights on that train, or at least, none greater than the standard connections we make as we survey each day of our lives, that is, in our quotidian mental activity of making what sense we can of it all. My conclusions were, therefore, often no more than simply the rehashing either of threads that I have already enumerated in this post, or of the threads that, more constantly and consistently, accompany me on my daily journey, the why’s and whither’s and what for’s that make up the bulk of human discernment.

There was one rather more special insight, however, that I would like to share. In encountering the other guests at the Abbey, each of whom had their own special reason and relationship with Hildegard, I was reminded once more not only of the manifold aspects of her life and work, but also of the great impact that each of those roles has on those of us today who encounter the “Sibyl of the Rhine”. Over the course of the months, I had begun, I realized, to succumb to that danger that lurks in the path of any academic: the danger of becoming too ensconced in our Ivory Towers, reducing, as it were, the true complexity of the figures we study to the merely academic and scholarly. My approach to Hildegard is (1) scholarly and (2) specifically theological, eschatological, and apocalyptic; and even when I step back from my specialty to survey the other fields of Hildegardiana—the music, the natural medicine, the theology not specifically eschatological—I nevertheless remain in that first mode of viewing, namely, the scholarly.

Yet, as I was reminded in those few days at the Abbey, Hildegard is to many much more than merely a topic of academic interest. I can look specifically to the Italian-German Catholic woman, whom we “scholars” would term an “amateur”, that is, whose interest in Hildegard is entirely practical. She studies Hildegard, spends time at Hildegard’s abbey, and reads Hildegard’s works, not because that’s her job, but because she finds meaning for her own life in Hildegard’s. Hildegard’s writings on natural medicine are not merely important as documents in the history of science; for her, they become actual tools in regulating the ailments of her own body. Likewise, Hildegard’s theology is not merely a collection of theoretical notions; rather, this woman has actually allowed her own spiritual life to be taught by Hildegard’s teachings. My time at the Abbey served as a great reminder to me that the vitality of Hildegard’s personality in our age is the product not of our scholarly researches but of actual people and their real encounters with an extraordinary woman of an age gone by. It is thus for us, the academics, not merely to write our books and give our lectures for the sake of other academics, but to realize that our profession, like all human activities, is meant to be for the advancement of humanity—and that such advancement is not merely an abstract goal of progress, but the concrete reality of people who live their lives in the here and now, perhaps weighed down by the weariness of day-to-day drudgery, yet also lifted up by the simple joys of day-to-day life, well-lived. Though we may use the language of us-versus-them, it is for us to recognize that, if we build the Ivory Tower and shut the world out, we but stifle and extinguish the vitality of our work. Let us, therefore, take as our example the Benedictine model: though we have our cloistered profession in which we trade in a commodity seemingly far removed from the lives of those outside the academic community, we must yet be open and, indeed, actively inviting to them; our principle should not be to close ourselves up, but to lay open the doors and take in our guests, providing them, in our own peculiar way, with refreshment in their lives—for it is the outsiders to our community who, in fact, provide our community with its own greatest rejuvenation.

The General Plan

It recently occurred to me that readers of this blog, whatever they may think of it, might be rather in the dark as to what exactly I’m doing this year in Germany. In my infinite wisdom, I have failed to write a post on the subject, despite the fact that I am already half-way through the ten-month Fulbright period. So to paraphrase the inimitable Sam Seaborne, let’s forget about the fact that I’m coming a little late to the party and embrace the idea that I showed up at all. Some of you will already be familiar with my work, and I would advise you not to waste your time reading further; this post is intended for the general reader who has not experienced first hand the trials and tribulations of the process that is applying for a Fulbright Grant. Thus, here follows the text of my Fulbright Project Statement as written more than a year ago:

“The 20th century has seen a revival of interest in many little-known medieval authors, especially in previously overlooked female writers. The journey of these authors from their time through to ours can be fascinating, and a study of the reception of their works through time can reveal much about each successive age.

One of the first major female authors to enjoy a resurgence of interest and scholarship was Hildegard von Bingen, an abbess and writer of the 12th century. Herbalists have embraced her for her works on natural medicine and cures, while New Age spirituality has found expression in the soaring melodies of her chant. Feminist movements have come to regard her as a monument to the power of the feminine in an age of misogyny. I myself discovered Hildegard one afternoon the summer after my sophomore year in college, while, working under an Advanced Study Grant from Boston College, I set about an introductory study of Medieval Latin literature and paleography.

In her own time, Hildegard was also well known as a visionary and prophet. She became a figure of wide renown after her powers were certified by Pope Eugenius III and she published in 1151 the first volume, Scivias, of her massive visionary trilogy. She corresponded with popes, kings, and even with Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa. At the age of 60, remarkably for a woman of that time, she embarked on the first of four preaching journeys.

For the great stretch of history between her death in 1179 and her modern rediscovery, Hildegard continued to enjoy a wide reputation as a visionary whose apocalyptic writings have been held to prophesy a number of subsequent events: the rise of the mendicant orders and their battles with the papacy over apostolic poverty; the Protestant Reformation; the rise (and fall) of those firebrands of Europe, the Jesuits; and in every age generally, the coming of the Antichrist.

This reputation as primarily a visionary prophet owes much to the fact that for most of that time, Hildegard’s works were not known in the fullness of the originals, but through a redaction of her prophetic and apocalyptic writings executed in the 1220’s by the Cistercian prior Gebeno von Eberbach. In his Speculum futurorum temporum or Pentachronon Gebeno collected various prophetic excerpts from two of Hildegard’s three large visionary volumes, Scivias and Liber divinorum operum, and from her correspondence. In addition to collecting various prophecies, Gebeno provided a commentary on them and, more important, on Hildegard as a prophet of her age and of the times to come.

Gebeno’s own times were ones of religious and social upheaval in Europe. The previous decade had seen the rise of two great new religious orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans; the Fourth Lateran Council, which was a watershed mark in the definition of the medieval church; and the papacy of Innocent III, whose attempts to expand the worldly authority of the Church brought him into deep conflict with the secular leanings of the Holy Roman Emperor, Friedrich II (whom many would identify with the Antichrist). The following decade would see the beginning of the reign of St. Louis IX in France and the continued fracture between the Church and the Empire. It was also a time of unrest among the peasants, who, after the experience in the previous century of the heretical Cathars and their violent repression by the Church, were soon to be faced by even more heretical movements and their even more violent repression by the nascent Inquisition; reports of the coming of the Antichrist and of the End Times were constant.

Under these circumstances Gebeno set about compiling Hildegard’s prophecies, and it is this compilation that I propose to study under a Fulbright Grant for the full academic year beginning October, 2007. While some scholars have investigated the impact of Gebeno’s work on the reception of Hildegard’s writing, few have approached him as an author in his own right. Why did Gebeno put together this “Mirror of Times to Come”? How did he gather the texts? How was he introduced to Hildegard’s writings, and where did he find his sources? How did Gebeno deal with her cumbersome style, which suffers from redundancies, awkward constructions, and strange neologisms (as he himself noted, “Most people disdain and abhor the books of St. Hildegard, because she spoke obscurely and in an unfamiliar style”)? How did the people and events of his time affect his writing? What do we learn in the Pentachronon about Gebeno as a thinker, a believer, and a writer of Latin? In short, how did the Pentachronon take shape and develop, both in itself and as a product of an abbot writing in the 1220’s?

One leading scholar who has taken a serious look at some of these issues is Prof. Christel Meier-Staubach, the director of the Seminar für Lateinische Philologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Prof. Meier-Staubach has done extensive work on Hildegard, including an examination of Gebeno’s writings. If I were awarded a Fulbright Grant, I would study with her and her colleagues, not only researching the development of Gebeno’s book, but also enrolling in a variety of courses offered by the Seminar in a broader study of Medieval Latin literature and philology; Prof. Meier-Staubach has kindly offered to support me in my work. Because the Latin language was fundamental in defining mediæval European culture, I hope to come to a better understanding and appreciation of that culture through a study of its language and literature. By the end of the Fulbright year I intend to produce a paper on the development of Gebeno’s thought and writings which can serve as the foundation for a doctoral thesis as I pursue graduate studies on my return to the United States.

Some might be tempted to pose the question: why is the study of an obscure, 800 year-old collection of apocalyptic writings important to our modern world? Gebeno wrote in a time of great conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the Church. The excommunications of Emperor Friedrich II in 1238 and of Friedrich Barbarossa the century before have long been wounds to the German cultural pride: Barbarossa is, after all, a great German hero. It was no accident that the Reformation occurred not in France or Italy but in Germany: the Germans have long had an uneasy relationship with the power and authority of the papacy, and this tension survives even today. An American might laugh at a headline that appeared after the election of Benedict XVI in 2005: “Wir sind Papst!”, but the irony was not lost on the Germans, for many of whom the papacy has long symbolized everything that can go wrong when fallible humans try to mediate the divine. It is telling that when Germans today look upon the magnificence of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, they often see past the gilded plaster to Rome’s attempts to finance the structure with German indulgence monies. As a religious 800 years ago, Gebeno was faced with similar disharmonies. In studying his work, therefore, I hope to learn how Gebeno dealt with the tensions between the civic, secular life of his countrymen and the sacred authority of the Church, for though on the surface our times are very different, the substance of the tensions that German Catholics still face today is similar. Indeed, such are also the tensions that resonate even in our own land, where the interplay between religious and secular identity, between the authority of the church and of the state, is an omnipresent issue. For the first time in history, the majority of the peoples of Western Europe and the United States primarily identify themselves not with a religious label but with a secular one, such as “American,” “Deutsche,” or “citoyen”. In a very broad but very real sense, the roots of this so-called “secularization” of Western culture lie in Gebeno’s own turbulent age, and so the crises of faith of his times might prove the key to beginning to understand the crises of faith of our own age.”

Thus I initially proposed. As I recently reflected on the state of my project midway through its implementation—a reflection carried out at the behest of the U.S. Student Fulbright Program—I rehashed this lengthy and embellished proposal into the statement of three goals:

1. To read the entire text of Gebeno von Eberbach’s "Pentachronon sive Speculum Futurorum Temporum" and catalogue the origin(s) of each of the prophecies.

2. To investigate the historical, social, political, religious, and literary context of Gebeno’s work.

3. To investigate the wider implications of the oft contentious relationship betweeen the German people and the hierarchy of the Roman church.

Finally, I was asked to evaluate my progress in achieving these three goals:

The most significant marker of my project’s progress to date would be my early realization that, despite significant progress on the microcosmic level of working directly with the text itself, I had so far neglected to properly prepare myself for the macrocosmic placement of the work in the wider context of medieval apocalyptic thought. Hence, in addition to my continuing work with the text (I have read and catalogued approximately the first half of the full text), I have undertaken at first a broad introduction to apocalyptic thought, which has gradually focused into in-depth reading on apocalypticism specific to the 12^th and 13^th centuries; in short, I have spent a lot of time with my nose buried in books. The result of this reading has been a recasting of my understanding of Hildegard’s role in 13^th-century apocalypticism; up until now, scholarship in this field has focused almost exclusively on the role of another 12^th-century thinker, Joachim of Fiore. Thus, while I am still making some progress on Goal #2 (Gebeno’s historical context), its importance has been subordinated to a new goal, namely, establishing the role of Hildegard (via Gebeno) in 13^th-century apocalypticism. Finally, my principal work on Goal #3 (the German relationship with the Papacy) has been my reading/study of other apocalyptic movements, especially the apocalyptic role of the papacy (e.g. the myths of the angelic pope and the papal antichrist) and its close relationship to the apocalyptic role of the Holy Roman Emperor.

Rather than spending any more time boring the lot of you with the tedious details of this academic’s arcane work, I think I’ll get back to doing what I do best: reading.

A "Normal" Day

As I seem to be asked the question, “What is it that you do all day, anyway?” by a significant number of people on both sides of the Atlantic, I thought I should give some description of what a “normal” day looks like for me. Before I describe my own routine, however, I should like to quote an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ autobiography, Surprised By Joy, to give a sense of how nearly (and quite by accident) I seem to have struck at his own ideal academic day—an indication, perhaps, that there might exist a Platonic Idea of the academic life in which both Lewis and I have participated. This passage comes from a chapter called “The Great Knock,” which describes the time Lewis spent preparing for his university entrance exams with Mr. Kirkpatrick of Great Bookham in Surrey.

We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as an archetype, so that what I still mean when I speak of a “normal” day (and lament that normal days are so rare) is a day of the Bookham pattern. For if I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for a man does not want to drink alone and if you meet a friend in the tap-room the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the out-door world; and talking leads almost inevitable to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one…who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared. The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude, as I took it at Bookham on those (happily numerous) occasions when Mrs. Kirkpatrick was out; the Knock himself disdained this meal. For eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirable. Of course not all books are suitable for meal-time reading. It would be a kind of blasphemy to read poetry at table. What one wants is a gossipy, formless book which can be opened anywhere. The ones I learned so to use at Bookham were Boswell, and a translation of Herodotus, and Lang’s History of English Literature. Tristram Shandy, Elia and the Anatomy of Melancholy are all good for the same purpose. At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and at Bookham I had none) there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is an essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock….Such is my ideal, and such then (almost) was the reality, of “settled, calm, Epicurean life”.

Thus Lewis. This Fulbright year is the equivalent of Lewis’ time at Bookham; thus, I need not yet (though certainly the time is coming) lament its rarity. Usually, I rise between seven and eight o’clock, shower, dress, and eat some breakfast. Somewhere between 8:30 and 9:15, I catch the bus and take it half-way from the dorm to the city. I then exit the bus and walk the remainder, typically about thirty minutes, to help get the blood flowing. I arrive in my office between 9:30 and 10:00, and, after setting up my laptop, I check my email and the news reports on CNN.com. Unfortunately, though the physical postman almost never knocks, his electronic counterpart throngs me incessantly, and I willingly oblige him. This is one of two facts that distinguish me considerably from Lewis. The other is my addiction to remaining connected with the news at home and around the world; by his own admission, Lewis never took a liking to reading the newspaper. Of course, he never had the Internet at his fingertips, though I hardly doubt that he would have scorned it with greatest obstinacy had it featured in his lifetime.

On particularly news-worthy days (such as today, being the day after an important number of primary elections in the United States) my perusal of the news sites may last until lunch time; if it doesn’t, then the remaining time until lunch is filled with reading of a more academic bent. Lunch is taken between 12:30 and 1:00 at the small Mensa (university-run cafeteria) a few blocks from my office in the basement of Fürstenberghaus, a building which houses the History and Archaeology departments, together with their respective libraries and several large lecture halls and smaller classrooms. After lunch and depending on the state of the weather (today’s dreary, damp, and cold overcast was not conducive), I may take anything from a short to a rather long walk; the shorter will accompany the worser weather and will be for the sake of renewing the blood flow; the longer will accompany better weather and will be for the sake of enjoying it. Upon returning to the office anywhere between 1:15 and 2:15, I settle in again with my books; depending on how I’m feeling, this may or may not be accompanied with a coffee, either the cheaper stuff from the Mensa or the more expensive fare from the coffee shop down the street.

This reading will take me until a quarter to six, at which time I will pack up my computer and whatever books I wish, and head down the street to the Lambertikirche, whose daily Mass runs approximately forty minutes from exactly six o’clock (the Germans being such punctual people, the priest has never failed to appear more than 10 seconds after the striking of the six o’clock bells). I then make the ten minute walk to the train station where I pick up the bus back to dorm, where I arrive at twenty minutes past seven. After fixing dinner, I eat while viewing an episode of The West Wing from my DVD collection, after which cleaning up the dishes will usually take me to about half past eight, at which time I put some good reading music on and settle into bed with a good book. Between 10:30 and 11:00, my eyes will begin to grow heavy, and I will close the book, turn off the computer and lights, and settle down to sleep.

It is as much for posterity’s sake as for anything else that I commit this mundane pattern to writing; I imagine that this time next year, I will look back fondly and nostalgically to this time of plenty of sleep, long walks for the sake of nature, and cozy reading unhurried by the demands of the graduate student’s schedule. For now, at least, I shall simply be content to pass the days whose abiding feature is best summed up with the German word Gemütlichkeit—an atmosphere of coziness, comfort, and contentment, of time passed without anxiety for the past or the future, of life lived according to its natural rhythms, free of stress and frenzy.

On the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives

Edit: It turns out that this is actually an "extension of remarks", which means that Rep. Tancredo didn't actually say this whole spiel on the floor--rather, he had the full text added later to the Congressional Record. If you look at the actual page from the Congressional Record, you will notice that, in addition to his mention of me in the far right column, he congratulates another Fulbright recipient from his district in the far left column; a glance through the other pages of Monday's "Extension of Remarks" pages of the Record indicate that he congratulated all of the Fulbright recipients from his district; most likely, he mentioned us all together in his remarks on the actual floor of the House, and then had each of us separated out in the "Extension of Remarks" section of the record.

This was passed on to me by Prof. Don Hafner, the chair of the Political Science Dept. at Boston College; it is an entry from the Congressional Record recording a statement made yesterday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by my own congressman, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado):

CONGRATULATING NATHANIEL CAMPBELL
                                _______  

                 HON. THOMAS G. TANCREDO
                         of Colorado
               in the House of Representatives
                   Monday, January 28, 2008

     Mr. TANCREDO. Madam Speaker, I rise today
to pay tribute to one of my constituents, Mr. 
Nathaniel Campbell of Bailey, Colorado.
Mr. Campbell is a literature student at Boston
College and is a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright
Award. This grant is given to promising individuals
to aid them in their academic and cultural pursuits
abroad.
     The Fulbright Program was established by
Congress in 1946 and is sponsored by the U.S. State
Department. This program was designed to help
build mutual understanding between Americans
and the global community. Individuals who are
awarded this distinction have demonstrated
outstanding academic or professional achievement
and have proven themselves as leaders in their field.
     Madam Speaker, please join me in paying tribute to
Mr. Campbell and wishing him the best in his
future endeavors.

Settling into a routine...

I apologize for the paucity of my posts over the last few weeks; a combination of factors has led to it. First, I've been busy getting into the swing of the semester (I have just finished the second week of classes) and getting established in my research; and second, I have found myself faced with my own personal expectation that when I write a post, it should be lengthy and detailed, and that it should live up to the eloquence of some of my previous missives. I have decided, however, to free myself from such obligations, and to simply write whenever and whatever should be of immediate pertinence.

Unlike my previous posts, which have been written from either an Internet Cafe or from the university's computer lab, I am writing to you now while sitting at my desk in the offices of the Seminar for Latin Philology of the Middle Ages and Modern Era. This is, perhaps, one of the more important developments of the last few weeks; I did not expect that when I sat down to first meet with my adviser two and half weeks ago that she would, at the end of the meeting, hand me a set of keys and lead me to my office. Earlier this week, the Seminar's resident technology guru, Prof. Lesser, finally got the internet connection working, and so here I sit.

The use of this office has, and will be, however, a God-send to the work I am going to be doing this year, because it gives me (1) a place to seclude myself and get work done; (2) a place to keep all of my books, notebooks, and other research materials; and (3) access to the Seminar's fabulous library, where many of the books reside that I will need and that one is not allowed to take out of the normal university library. As some of you will probably note, it seems that my life is starting to be defined as a series of workplaces that I colonize (see my post from Thursday, October 2, 2006).

So far, my "research" has been limited to lots of reading--though I surmise that that will be the name of the tune for much of the year to come. It finally dawned on me about a week and half ago that one of the great opportunities this year affords me is simply to spend lots of time reading. Accordingly, I've spent several hours combing through the university library's catalogue finding books (preferably in English) that both intrigue me and will serve me well on my journey as a medieval scholar. Though I'm currently finishing up a book on the Crusades that I brought with me (I bought it at the beginning of the summer with a Barnes and Noble gift card given to me for graduation, but never got around to it), next on my list are several books from the library on medieval apocalypticism, two of them by the renowned scholar Bernie McGinn.

I'm also taking a couple of classes: one, which meets on Monday mornings, is a reading class of St. Bernard of Clairvaux's "How to Be Pope Manual" to Pope Eugenius III, De Consideratione ad Eugenium Papam (Pope Eugenius was one of Bernard's students before he was elected to the papacy); and two classes on Thursday, a lecture class on what the Germans call "Bibeldichtung", a genre of literature that is based on the Bible, the most famous example in the English language being John Milton's Paradise Lost; and a class on palaeography. I was going to take class on Friday afternoons that I thought focused on Saints and Relics in the Middle Ages, but after talking with the professor, it turns out it is an introductory class in studying medieval history, and I have decided not to take it, since it would be elementary (and a waste of time, as it meets for 3 and half hours on Friday afternoon!).

So I'm going to settle in for another relaxing weekend with some more good books, and I promise to try to post more frequently.

In the House of the Pope

To my avid readers (a presumptuous adjective, but for which I ought not be faulted, I think), I apologize for the lengthy pause between my last post and this, for I had hoped to make once-a-week a standard. Unfortunately, it has taken me until today, because of many hoops of a bureaucratic nature too mundane and too numerous to recall here, to be able to access the internet wirelessly from my own laptop through the university's network. For the last two weeks, therefore, I have contented myself with snippets of the Internet bought a few cents at a time in an Internet Cafe across from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), and that was no place for me to write to this blog (else it would have been a rather more expensive affair than it already was).

The major story I wish to relate today happened a week ago, but I think will be well worth the delay. Our story begins, however, not in Münster but in Boston, where the dear Prof. Michael Resler, head of Boston College's German Department, and the dearer still secretary of that department, Agnes Farkas, have long kept detailed records of anyone living in Germany at any time with any connection to Boston College (I think Agnes is far more to be thanked for this, but it is Prof. Resler who actually sent the email). Accordingly, Prof. Resler was able to put in touch three Boston College alumni spanning several generations who all, it just so happens, now live in Münster: myself; Jennifer Burkart, a former Boston College Fulbrighter to Germany from the 1990's , now living in the Münster area with her German husband, Jörg; and Dr. Bill Hoye, BC Class of 1965, a recently retired member of the Theology faculty at the Universität-Münster, living with his German wife, Holle Frank. (From left to right: me, Jennifer, and Dr. Hoye).

As she had maintained contact with Prof. Resler (who even a decade ago was rather enthusiastic about sending Eagles to Germany on the State Department's dime), he sent Dr. Hoyes's and my contact information to Jennifer, and after her introductions, Dr. Hoye and his wife graciously invited the lot of us to their house for dinner last Thursday evening.

So, round about 7:15 (after a bit of panic earlier that Jennifer's email might have said that they would pick me up at 17:15 (5:15pm) as opposed to 7:15pm in the American style), Jennifer and Jörg pulled up in the rain to the bus stop outside our dorms where I was waiting, and we were off to Bill and Holle's house near the university's botanic gardens.

After introductions were made, we were ushered into their living room, where discussion in a mixture of English and German, accompanied with some nice port and excellent olives, was joined. Dr. Hoye, it turned out, had traveled to Europe after finishing at B.C. to pursue various graduate studies in theology, his focus being on medieval scholastic thought. After meeting and marrying Holle, they settled down in Münster, where he taught for many years. Though recently retired, he is nevertheless teaching a course this semester (for the fun of it) on St. Thomas Aquinas. Jennifer, on the other hand, met Jörg during her Fulbright year in Trier, and they later settled down in Münster, where she has just started a new job teaching Business English in the Economics Department of the Katholische Hochschule (Catholic College) here in Münster.

We were now invited to the dining room, where the delightful conversation continued over an excellent salad of shrimp, tomatoes, and bell peppers (you will discover that my praise for Holle's cooking will abound), and then a main course of roast beef, roasted potatoes, and a tasty recipe of creamed spinach (sorry Mom, I didn't happen to ask her secret). Jörg, it seems, works as a computer programmer, while Dr. Hoye's wife, Holle, has had a long and successful career as an artist. She is an amazing photographer, and has recently taken up video art, which she has successfully combined with her recent discovery of the phenomenon of YouTube.

The discussion turned to family, and both Jennifer and Dr. Hoye offered interesting anecdotes of life an ocean apart from the rest of their family. Bill and Holle are looking to travel to the United States for several months after the New Year so that he can work on his next book (in English) on eschatology. They would like to be in Massachusetts, as it would be near to much of his family, but have been having bad luck so far finding a place--they had hoped to rent a house on the cape.

The fortuitous intersection of our three lives took another interesting tangent when I asked Jennifer about her Fulbright work. It turns out that she, too, had written a Scholar of the College project her senior year at B.C., in the field of art history. Her focus was on the miniatures in a manuscript of the Carolingian renaissance, the time around the 9th-century reign of Charlemagne. It was the topic of the art of the Carolingian renaissance that had led her, then, to do a Fulbright year in Trier. Unfortunately, she did not enjoy her topic nearly as much as I do mine, and has left the world of medieval art history far behind her.

The others were prompted to inquire as to my own project, and I gave my spiel, now well-honed from having to repeat it so many times. One aspect that I had neglected, though, was that I had mentioned in my project proposal an interest in the traditionally strained relationship between the Germans and the Papacy as a wider historical trend, with the interesting note that a German pope as we have now puts the tensions of the past into a new light. As I hadn't yet had the opportunity to ask many Germans about their feelings about Pope Benedict, f.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger, I put the question to Holle, whose reaction to the announcement of Ratzinger's election stands in stark contrast to many of the Jesuits at Boston College: she felt several minutes of pure, ecstatic joy, which was only later mitigated by here concerns (shared by many Germans) about his less-than-liberal tendencies. She pointed out, however, that he seems to have brought the German mindset of environmentalism with him, as the Vatican has recently started to support several "green" projects in various parts of Eastern Europe (where the environmental damage wrought by the Soviet Union was formidable).

Our conversation about the Pope also led to what was perhaps my favorite tale of the evening. Holle recalled attending several lectures given by then Prof. Ratzinger during his time as a member of the theological faculty here in Münster (1962-5, I believe it was). She could not let us leave, however, without noting another feature of the Pope's stay in this city. At some point during his tenure here, his apartment underwent several months of renovations, and the landlord graciously offered a spare room in his own house to the future Pontiff for the duration of the work. That house was later bought by none other than Bille Hoye and Holle Frank, who took it upon herself to do the research, comb the records, and establish that indeed, Joseph Ratzinger lived in the room just above our heads as we sat at the dinner table, for a period of several months in the 1960's.

The conversation could have gone on and on as first we indulged in some ice cream cake and then in some fine Lindt chocolates, but alas, the evening had to come to an end, as the Burkarts both had to go to work the next day. After the now-customary exchange of email addresses, and the taking of the photo you see above, we bid our farewells, and laid plans also for another get-together round Thanksgiving time.

My recollections today could go one, but I must bring this post to an end as I've still some preparing to do. You see, I am traveling to Munich tomorrow to join a gathering of some of the Boston College German Fulbrighters at the last weekend of the Oktoberfest. I promise pictures and stories (though I shall have to be judicious in which ones I share here :-) on my return.

The Dalai Lama Came Today

Here I am, in Germany. Finally. I have decided to revive my use of this blog (to which I have seldom posted of late) as a general means of communicating my experiences to you, my faithful reader, as I make my way through the next 10 months as a Fulbright student at the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität in Münster. Here will be collected anecdotes of various kinds, updates on this or that, and my thoughts (as you should have been able to expect) on the goings on--here, in the world at large, and at home (for I continue to receive The Heights via email every Monday and Thursday: so you should also expect a diatribe from time to time on the decline and fall (since I am no longer there) of Boston College, or conversely its rise to ever greater things from the generation to come).

I arrived on Monday morning, jetlagged (a condition that seems to persist even to today), and found my way with 2 massive bags (though not that massive, since they were, in fact, lighter than the bags that I packed when I left for Boston a year ago to start my senior year) from the airport in Frankfurt to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), thence to Göttingen, a city in central Germany where the Fulbright Commission put us up in a Best Western (yes, the same) for two days of invaluable orientation. On the train, I specifically noted that I should relate two observations, both of which are connected to the fact that the train car I was in (standing the whole way, as there were no unreserved seats left) was more than half filled with a school group of what I believe in America are termed "tweens", girls so chatty and wrapped up in their own nascent adolescent concerns that if a world were to exist oustide of their sphere of being, it certainly would be of little importance:
1. The group was accompanied by 2 teachers, one man and one woman. The man, though the physical resemblance would end at "glasses and a beard", nevertheless bore a striking mental resemblance to my father, for when he once was walking up and down the aisle checking on his students, a smile graced his face as I have seen any number of times on the visage of my own father as he gazes upon his students--enveloped perhaps in their own little world, but little spheres of budding curiosity and learning and life all the same.
2. The particular group of 4 girls who sat directly in front of where I stood those two hours did, at one point in the journey, have an argument concerning the proper pronunciation of the word "Lufthansa". Three of them seem rather bemused that one insisted on pronouncing it "Luf-thansa", for the proper German pronunciation syllabifies the word according to its component words, "Luft" and "Hansa" (so "Luft-hansa"). This poor girl, however, had fallen prey of the same tendency that governs the American pronunciation of the term, namely, to maximize the onset of the middle syllable, thus moving the "t" sound from the first syllable into the second. All of which did pass through my mind, at which point I realized that the lingustics class that I took last year from Prof. Michael Connolly had completely ruined me for life, as I know he well intended.

We return, then, to the Orientation. I'm sure that all would agree that by the far the best part of the entire orientation experience (apart from the lengthy, oft stupefying yet invaluable information sessions that answered such important questions as "How do we get paid?") was getting to meet the other Fulbrighters and query them on their respective projects - indeed, for that endeavour I wish we'd had another day, for I didn't get to talk to everybody. Of particular interest to me was that the Fulbright Commission seems to have been on a medieval women kick this year, for in addition to my project on the 13th century reception of the apocalyptic works of the 12th century abbess and visionary, St. Hildegard von Bingen (of whom you will hear quite enough in the course of this year), two women have also been given grants to study female medieval authors. The one, who is working on her doctoral dissertation at Northwestern (and who is very well acquainted with several of the profs with whom I hope to start working next year at the University of Notre Dame), will be in Munich investigating apocalyptic writing of the 14th and 15th centuries - a few centuries after my time, but a project to which Hildegard is fundamental. The other, finishing her masters work at Tufts, is working (also in Munich) on several chronicles written by German nuns of the 13th and 14th century - again, past my time but yet very much bound up with the after-history of Hildegard. I had been looking for an excuse to return to Munich anyway (I loved the city when I lived there for 2 months almost 2 years ago), so now I have it - I imagine we all shall visit several times before the year is up to collate and talk shop.

Alas, Wednesday morning the fun had to come to an end, and I had to make an uncomfortably early exist from Göttingen (the train left at 7:45) in order to get to Münster in time to get the paperwork for my dorm room in order (the offices of the Studentenwerk--their equivalent to an Office of Residential Life--are only open Tuesday through Thursday, 9am-12pm; such is the way of most every German office that one should need to visit). A few taxi rides later (I accidentally went to the wrong building on my first try), I had succeeded in securing a room for the next year. It's a single room with a bed, desk, shelves, closet, refrigerator, and sink, and their are common bathrooms and a common kitchen on each floor. Perhaps not the greatest of accomodations, but at only €190 a month, I'll take it.

After settling into my room, I've spent the last few days wandering around the city, my philosophy being that the best way to learn your way around is to get a map, get yourself intentionally lost, and then find your way home. A misunderstanding concerning the bus routes meant that I had to walk most of the way home on Wesdnesday night, but all in all, I'm really starting to get a good feel for the place--and my dorm is only about 3.5 kilometers outside the city center.

I would call it a city on the small side of medium--larger certainly than was Eichstätt, but not nearly so large as was Munich. It has a beautiful inner city jampacked with an assortment of now-to-be-expected medieval, baroque, and 19th century buildings, their ground floors now filled, as with any modern city, mostly with high-end fashion and other boutiques far out of the reach of my pocketbook; it's own share of impressively outfitted churches (enough to fulfill my pentient for "church-hopping") with the standard array of architectural styles and enough Masses per day to accomodate most any schedule; and a delightful greenbelt that runs the permeter (the remains of the mote and ramparts that surrounded it in less collegial times), through which I have not yet had the pleasure to stroll but to which I eagerly look forward.

Finally, I made my way today into the heart of the university (as with most German universities, its campus is indistinguishable in most places from the city), which is to be found on the grounds of the great baroque Schloß, or palace, that was built there when a nobleman still ruled these parts--a wonderful walk now through many acres of manicured gardens. Now that impressive building houses various offices of the university, including, in a side building off to the north, the International Office, where I stopped this morning to clear up a few things, most especially the fact that, according to the Letter of Admission from the university, I was registered as a woman. Not a problem, said the very kind Frau Bobke, who then called up Herr Friedmann (off their version of an Office of Student Services) and, after a telephone conversation that happened too fast for me to follow, she whisked me to his office (in the great palace itself--the interior unfortunately no longer matching the baroque majesty of the exterior), where he not only was able to change my gender in their computer system but also was able to complete all the other paperwork to get me officially matriculated, a process that, had I not inquired, would have taken until the 10th of October to complete. Along with the matriculation number that I now possess come several delightful benefits: a semester pass for the bus system; a catalogue of courses (so that I can finally figure out what I'm going to take); and a username and password (which should come in the mail next week) for the university's computer centers--a relief from having to pay for access at an internet cafe.

And that brings me to the title of this post: it would seem (or so the signs said, and the heavy press and police presence would confirm) that the Dalai Lama is visiting this very university today. As a commentary on the experience thus far or to come, perhaps it should serve as a reminder of two things: (1) fascinating and unexpected things await me, and (2) as exciting as this week has been for me, there are far more important things going on in the world. A dichotomy to make a medievalist proud, both uplifting and humbling, both energizing and subduing.

So there it all stands: less than week down, and many chores already complete. Time now, I think, to go the bookstore, find something suitable to wile away the weekend, and settle down on a nice bench in a park somewhere.