I liked that Nederman ended his conclusion with a plea that we take the past seriously. Though his words immediately preceding this sentence indicate that he meant that Medieval Europe should be considered when we attempt to understand our current political and philosophical environment, I feel like his words could be used to address some of the recurring issues we have had in our class.
Taking the past seriously means that we must endeavor to understand the Europe of the Middle Ages on its own terms; instead of just imposing our current intellectual categories onto the literary figures of the past, we also should attempt to interpret them using the categories that were available at the time. I am not saying that there is not a valuable interpretation to be made of, for example, Sir Gawain as a homosexual or Margery Kempe as delusional, but that interpretation should be aware of the temporal imperialism that is enacted as a result. The attitude in much of those claims seems to be that the writers of the Middle Ages were children, unaware of the true meaning of their words and of their narratives, and that it is up to us, the adults of history, to tell them what they mean.
In terms of Nederman's broader discussion of toleration, I feel that this means that we should be wary of dismissing the tolerance that was present in medieval Europe, just because it does not look or sound like the tolerance we practice (or sometimes fail to practice) today. Expecting to see ourselves reflected back in the literature of centuries ago seems a much less satisfying intellectual pursuit than tracing the reflections of that same literature in our culture today.
I think it is important that we distinguish between what tolerance meant to medieval Europeans and what it means for us 21st century Americans. Nederman says that tolerance to the medieval mind meant recognition of differences, especially those that God had created. But they also believed in a distinction between the natural and the unnatural - the former being good and the latter being evil. Homosexuality, Gender role reversal, and divergent religious beliefs (what they termed heresy) were unnatural to them, and thus not to be tolerated. This is very different from the modern conception of tolerance, which does not categorize things as natural or unnatural, and thus good or evil. A gay man, a career woman, and a Hare Krishna are not "unnatural" or "evil" because they live outside societal expectations. Contemporary tolerance is difficult to define, ranging from begrudging acknowledgement to unconditional acceptance. I would say, though, that one of the major distinctions between medieval tolerance and modern tolerance is that the modern does not label diversities as natural or unnatural as does the medieval.
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