The Proper Study of Mankind?

Dr. Regis Martin

Would it surprise anyone to learn that the answer is woman? Henry Adams, author of Mount-Saint-Michel and Chartres, certainly thought so. Although not much read nowadays, it is a richly informed piece of work, filled with wonders about a vanished world that had already been dead 700 years by the time he discovered it more than a century ago in 1904.

The most striking feature in the entire medieval landscape, declared Adams, who made a very close study of it, ! was the figure of Mary, through whom that whole world came beautifully to light. She exemplified for him the two loftiest vocations of woman, that of virgin and mother...