It is said the monks of Glastonbury Abbey were not exemplary in every respect. By the twelfth century, the Order of Saint Benedict had thousands of years to devise means to separate appearances from reality. They were known for “holy reading,” but the library at Glastonbury had the most complete collection of pornography in the western world. It’s in ruins today and its library is long-since dispersed to wealthy elites, but the scholar Cristi Gilchrist reminds us that books represent all aspects of being human, including practice of the deadly sins.
Tales