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Podcast: New Books in Medieval History
Episode: Donald Ostrowski, "Europe, Byzantium, and the 'Intellectual Silence' of Rusā Culture" (Arc Humanities Press, 2018)
Description: In Europe, Byzantium, and the āIntellectual Silenceā of Rusā CultureĀ (Arc Humanities Press, 2018), Dr. Donald Ostrowski pens a fresh look at an old question: Why did intellectual path of Medieval Russian culture differ so much from its counterparts in Western Europe? In a phrase: Why was there no Russian Abelard? In addition to deep analysis of the primary sources, Ostrowski provides a window into the history of historians debating this question. The book concludes by arguing that Rusā was not in fact āsilentā at all. Rather, Rusā intellectual culture simply spoke on a different frequency than that of Medieval Western Europe...