Formerly haligweorc; Derek A. Olsen & St. Bede Productions
Ok, y’all—I need your help… As I’ve been saying, I’m working on this book on the Psalm commentary of Cassiodorus. Right now I’m wrestling with how to present the way that he structures his commentary and give readers a sense of the experience of reading his commentary. He goes about
I’m picking up where I left off with Caesaria and Radegund, but going back in time, heading to the beginning of the 5th century… Radegund and Caesaria were part of a larger movement sweeping through the church, a movement that would shape the contours of the Western Church for several
I’m focusing a lot of energy right now on my Cassiodorus/Psalms book and not getting a whole lot else done… I’m hoping to post here more regularly, but at the moment, most of my thoughts are occupied in the early medieval psalter… So here’s something from that! I’ve been pondering
I wrote this chunk of text this morning for the Cassiodorus books. It’s a work in progress. I don’t think it’s fully decided what argument it’s tackling and I have the feeling that it might be astride two related but different topics. In any case, I thought I’d float it
Here’s a chunk from volume 1 where I’m talking about the apparent relationship between the respective works on the psalms of Augustine and Cassiodorus and the difference between them as authors. There’s quite a bit more to be said on this topic, though… Cassiodorus and Augustine have a fascinating literary relationship.
Here is another chunk for volume 2; the beginning portion refers to a discussion of Cassiodorus’s reading, pointing out that one of his strategies for interpreting the Psalms is drawn from the interpretation of classical drama. In this section, I’m picking up this notion and discussing how modern people can
I’ve been doing a lot of work on my books on Cassiodorus and the psalms. So far, most of my effort has gone into the first volume. The first volume is a more-or-less straightforward historical and exegetical description of what Cassiodorus does when he reads the psalms and transmits the
While packing lunches this morning I had a thought hit me that I need to look into further… The life of Cassiodorus falls into two major sections: The Politician and The Theologian. Cassiodorus begins his political career as quaestor around 507, serves as consul in 514, becomes the magister officiorum
I’m in the final stages of edits for my next book, the one on prayer book spirituality. It finally has a title: Inwardly Digest: The Prayer Book as Guide to a Spiritual Life. As I went through the section on the Calendar yesterday morning, I realized that while I’d talked
I have taken St. Bede as my patron because he represents an ideal for me: a spiritually grounded interpreter who fundamentally exists within the cycle of the church’s prayer and who reads and interprets Scripture in conscious connection with the Fathers, with intellectual rigor, for the purpose of edifying souls.