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For most English speakers, the name Hedwig, if it means anything at all, conjures up the obliging owl that delivers messages to Harry Potter. But if you come from central Europe-and especially if you come from Poland-Hedwig means something quite different: she's a royal saint who, around 1200, became a national and religious symbol, and who through the centuries has delivered not messages, but miracles.
對(duì)于大多數(shù)人來(lái)說(shuō)，提及海德薇這個(gè)名字最多能聯(lián)想到哈利·波特那只聽(tīng)話的貓頭鷹信差，但對(duì)中歐人，尤其是波蘭人而言，海德薇有著特殊的含義：她是出身王室的基督教圣徒，在公元1200年左右成為民族與宗教的象征。在數(shù)個(gè)世紀(jì)里，她傳遞的不是信息，而是奇跡。
The most famous of all the Hedwig miracles was that the water in her glass turned regularly into wine, and across central Europe there is to this day a small, puzzling group of distinctive glass beakers alleged to be the very glasses from which she drank the miraculous liquid.
她最廣為人知的奇跡，是她玻璃杯中的水會(huì)定期變成美酒。至今，中歐各地仍有一些神秘而極具特色的玻璃杯被視為她當(dāng)年用來(lái)盛這些奇跡之水的容器。
One of Hedwig's beakers is now in the British Museum, and it takes us at once to the high religious politics of the Crusades, the great age of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, and to the unexpected fact that the war between Christians and Muslims was accompanied by a great flourishing of trade. And recent research is now leading us to think that Hedwig's beakers, revered in central Europe as evidence of a Christian miracle, were most probably made by Islamic glass-workers in the Middle East.
大英博物館也收藏了一個(gè)海德薇的玻璃杯。它引領(lǐng)我們穿越歷史，回到宗教與政治高度結(jié)合的十字軍時(shí)代，回到獅心王理查與薩拉丁的偉大時(shí)代，去面對(duì)一個(gè)意外的事實(shí)：同基督徒與穆斯林之間的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)相伴而生的是雙方蒸蒸日上的貿(mào)易往來(lái)。最近的研究讓我們逐漸認(rèn)識(shí)到，被中歐人當(dāng)作基督教神跡的海德薇杯，極有可能出自中東信仰伊斯蘭教的玻璃工匠之手。
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