INTRODUCTION

Now that we have become somewhat familiar with the various strands of the complex arguments put forward by some of the key writers of the ancient and early Christian traditions concerning knowing and remembering, the reader might wish to pause and reflect on the essential continuity of this tradition. The reader should be aware that we have been examining through exegesis a repertory of texts that would serve as a legacy to the later medieval and early modern centuries and to which later writers would return in order to get their bearings on the problems of memory.

But in part II we must adopt another method to investigate what, during the early middle ages, was discovered about memory. This is because the ancient legacy of texts would recede into the background, indeed be purposely forgotten by men who in an extraordinary way were determined to create their future in a manner that recalled very little of their past. Today, it is not uncommon to hear the sighs of those distressed by how little a younger generation knows about even a recent past; and if memory is inspired at all, it adopts the nostalgic, utopian pose contrasting the bad new present with the purportedly good old days. But what if the past were to be viewed as the bad old days? What if the turmoil of the present were seen as caused directly by those bad old days and their values?