Rain Tree

The weeping willow by the duck pond at UNM, backlit by the low sun, looked like it was raining. There is something about UNM that it looks better in B&W, therefore, all the photos are in B&W tonight.

Both lectures in the Medieval Lecture Series tonight were fantastic. The first lecture, by Pamela Patton from Southern Methodist University, was titled "'Aliens in Their Midst': Reimagining Jews in Reconquest Spain".  She's an art historian, so she used images from the 14th and 15th centuries to demonstrate how Jews where depicted in art of that period. It was a very interesting approach to literally looking at a slice of medieval history. One woman made a comment that Spaniards are now proud to have muslim roots. However, that wasn't the attitudes of Spaniards when we lived in Spain 10 years ago.

The second lecture was titled "Medieval Christians and the Qur 'an" by Thomas E. Burman from the University of Tennessee. Mr. Burman is an excellent speaker and a superb scholar. Apparently the Qur 'an was translated into Latin during the high middle ages into the Renaissance, and widely distributed, as there are 40 manuscripts of the Qur 'an in Latin that have survived from the middle ages. The reaction to the Qur 'an by medieval people ran the gamut from very hostile to viewing it as interesting and exotic literature. A Dominican Friar named Riccoldo da Mante di Croce (died in 1320) did one of the highest quality translation of the Qur 'an into Latin that was careful and accurate, then wrote a treatise against Islam that was widely readw as 38 manuscripts have survived. 

During the Renaissance there started to be more interest in the Qur 'an as literature and as a curiosity. The richest man in Italy during the 14th century, a mercenary, had an extremely expensive, beautifully illuminated copy of the Qur 'an made that had both Latin translation and Arabic text. It was a coffee table book/conversation piece of the time as the Latin translation was very bad — it was not really meant to be read.

There are two more days of the lecture series with three more lectures and a performance offering "Musical Evidence of Europe's Encounters with Moors and Jews". If you don't have anything pressing, head down to UNM and enjoy learning about "Cultures in Contact, Convergence and Conflict" during the Middle Ages. Go to http://www.unm.edu/~medinst/ for more information and the schedule.