Scholarship and the Sacred - Professor John Carey

A lecture by Professor John Carey for the Temenos Academy delivered on 3rd February 2025. Those attracted by the work of the Temenos Academy are frequently people for whom words like ‘academe’ and ‘academic’ have uncongenial connotations: rationalism, positivism, reductionism, careerism, pedantry, arrogance, susceptibility to intellectual fashions. It is easy to caricature ‘academics’, and such caricatures are often not wide of the mark. Why then should the Temenos community be, of all things, an ‘Academy’? This question can be seen in a different light if we view it not from the perspective of the embattled present but from that of tradition – which is, after all, the perspective of Temenos. In former times, while the dangers of intellectual pride were certainly recognised, it was nevertheless also held that knowledge is closely akin to wisdom, just as wisdom is akin to holiness. Drawing primarily on patristic and medieval sources, but with reference to other traditions as well, we will seek to learn from these older insights. JOHN CAREY is Professor of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork. His books include A Single Ray of the Sun: Religious Speculation in Early Ireland (1999, 2011), Ireland and the Grail (2007), Ten Basic Principles That Inspire the Work of Temenos (2015), and The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature (2018). He is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, serving on its Academic Board and Council; and he is general editor of the Temenos Academy Review. For more about the Temenos Academy visit www.temenosacademy.org/ [Image credit - Paris, BnF, Française 9198. Vie et miracles de Notre Dame, en prose française, arrangés par Jean Miélot (detail]