Self-Help from the Middle Ages

Embark on an extraordinary journey through the labyrinth of medieval wisdom and contemporary introspection with Self-Help From the Middle Ages. While Peter Jones was a history professor in Siberia, struggling through a relentless winter, he found himself wondering whether the Middle Ages had a treatment for depression. He discovered that, even more than today, medieval culture was obsessed with self-help. At the centre of this were the Seven Deadly Sins; not vices, as we know them now, but building blocks for a medieval map of the mind. Through the lives of monks and mystics, artists and philosophers, Jones demonstrates how these ’sins’ were used as tools for improving the self – and why trying it their way might change our lives.