Reading the past
Elizabeth MacDonald on her novel about a scholarly medieval monk, A Matter of Interpretation
What drew you to stories of scholarship in medieval Europe?
The circulation of knowledge is a precarious business. Underpinning individual instances of genius is a dense network of hard graft, carried out by a silent army of diligent, self-sacrificing drones.
I have a particular regard for the self-effacing medieval translators who, in the face of great odds, built bridges between the knowledge-starved Dark Ages and the splendours of the classical world. Through illuminated manuscripts, they painstakingly brought back to life knowledge and languages that had nearly slipped from our grasp.
Were you inspired by any real medieval manuscripts in particular? The Book of Kells made a vivid impression on me as a child growing up in Dublin. So too did the haiku-like poems Irish monks sometimes left in the margins of the manuscripts they were compiling, which offered startlingly evocative glimpses of life in the Dark Ages. Later, I came across the 11th-century manuscript known as Al-Tasrif (‘The Method of Medicine’). I was enthralled by its illustrations of surgical instruments, most of which were unknown in Christendom.
What makes a young medieval monk an interesting protagonist for you?
For churchmen, the Middle Ages were a time of internationalism. My wayward but indomitable monk, Michael Scot, sets out from the wilds of Scotland in order to absorb the vast learning to be gained in the opulent cities of southern Europe. Here, he finds himself a barbarian outsider. Despite the church’s promotion of education, what it gave with one hand, it took back with the other, and Michael Scot struggles to balance his own ambitions with the exacting framework of obedience imposed by his superiors.