AN INTERESTING ASPECT OF THE MIDDLE AGES is the way in which big theological or philosophical ideas (at that time the distinction is not always clear-cut), find their way from the Latin discourse of scholars into vernacular texts intended for a very different audience, non-scholarly and frequently made up of members of the laity. The discursive and narrative texts that will be discussed below are mainly spiritual in orientation, were produced by a mixture of lay and religious authors, and demonstrate a wide range of approaches: didactic, gnomic, homiletic, and allegorical. It is also interesting to see how, while the broad parameters of a big idea may be laid down by ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the details that fill out the resulting schema can vary widely. In this instance, while the Middle Ages may be characterized by an acute awareness of religious differences, explicit reactions to these were less monolithic and more nuanced than one might expect.

Samuel Beckett, when asked whether he was an Englishman, is said to have replied, “Au contraire.” Nor do Canadians like to be taken for Americans, New Zealanders for Australians, Austrians for Germans. We attach emotional importance to differences that distinguish us from other people. Similarities are important too of course, but we seem in particular to use all kinds of differences between ourselves and other people, not just to establish the otherness of the Other, but also more positively to define our own place in the world, in a way that Hall associates with the thinking of Saussure: “‘Difference’ matters because it is essential to meaning.”