The Civilization of the Middle Ages

Rating:
Summary: Great Read, Great Overview
Review: The confusion with all of the different opinions on this classic college introductory European medieval history text are clearly due to the differences in the backgrounds of the various readers.

Cantor has produced a book that is absolutely wonderful in it's ability to pull together the twisted history of both major and minor events throughout Europe and relate them to one another. Being able to understand how Papal politics impacted the Germanic Princes and then caused reactions in England and the Low Countries, which then produced French political events that influenced the Papacy.....great stuff when it can all come together like this!

Cantor can read like an enjoyable novel if you have an active interest in the medieval period, he points out the seeds of feminism and does a good job of placing them in the context of the period, he does the same for heresy, piety and the monastic movements, law and politics, the development of monarchism, the growth of the bourgeoisie, and a host of other factors and elements from the middle ages.

There are valid criticisms of his work though....some of his facts are wrong (some he should have know and others have now had additional historical thought added to them)....for example, the Turks taking Constantinople and the details of the death of Thomas a Becket. More serious to me though is the lack of footnotes (which are so essential to credibility that the readability issues must take second consideration) and the total lack of maps to help with orientations (especially important for those not intimately familiar with medieval European geography).

I've created lists that provide Amazon links to Cantor's top 10 medieval books and top 10 films, if you want to continue to follow the syllabus for medieval understanding that he lays out in the book.



Rating:
Summary: Really deserves a 4.5
Review: The following review WAS NOT posted here, but for another book -- I am not sure why it has been moved here. Please accept my apologies.

In the Wake of the Plague is accessible, intelligent, and well worth the read. Cantor connects the plague in a persuasive and understandable manner to key elements in the evolution (and devolution) of civilization, and manages to tie this event -- which cut across all of the lives of the time -- with changes in the economic, social, political, scientific, philosophical, and personal lives of men AND (specifically) women.

Why did I short Dr. Cantor a star? Well, histories like this are both thrilling and a little bit of a trap. If you ever had a compelling, intriguing teacher like Dr. Cantor, you can sometimes forget the larger, more contentious world of history surrounding this very persuasive version of events. Being a pedant myself, I wish this awareness -- of other views, of the power of other events -- had been given more weight.

Rating:
Summary: Cantor gets medieval but not ancient society right.
Review: This is a book you should buy if you wish to understand the Middle Ages. But I must tell you that I was very nearly put off it by the author's tragically flawed understanding of Greek and Roman society. Greek and Roman culture are my areas of interest so I do feel I have some basis upon which to offer this critique.

The fact that his understanding of ancient society is flawed is rather frightening, because, as Cantor himself says, "...the heritage of the ancient world set the conditions for medieval society." So as I waded further into his book it was with considerable trepidation. If he got Greece and Rome so very, very wrong, how on earth could he get the Middle Ages right?

For example, reflect upon this near polemical attack on the Roman educational system (which seems to be to blame for a lot if Cantor is to be believed):

"The Romans were psychologically damaged by their educational system, as evidenced by their violence, aggression, sadism, hostility to women, and other unattractive characteristics. Children were treated badly, indeed, and many of them grew up to be sadomasochists."

It gets better. He goes on to remark that "...vestiges of this system have lived on into the twentieth century. The educational system of the medieval church was based on the Roman, and there were a good many neurotic educated adults within the medieval church."

And what exactly are the characteristics of the Roman educational system that produced this race of monsters? "It is a natural system for an aristocratic society, which needs to train its young people only to accept power handed on to them." The men who taught these benighted children were, and I QUOTE: "often slaves and frequently frustrated, sadistic men."

Wow!!! When you read something as novel and outlandish as this, you really want to see some source documentation. But you will be disappointed here. These remarks are not foot-noted and indeed one of the GRAVE failings of this book is that despite the fact Cantor re-edited and updated the entire text, he does not offer foot-notes. Having said that, his bibliography is quite good -- it is organized around a sort of top ten list format. But, curiously, the bibliography is placed AFTER a list of the best movies (!) on the Middle Ages.

I suppose like many scholars, he is a "man of his period" so to speak. His understanding of the Middle Ages is fluent and masterful, but his knowledge of the epochs that preceded it scanty and ill founded. Still I find it breath taking that he could be so wrong in places.

Having said this, my patience was rewarded. And my reading on the Middle Ages that I undertook as a result of this book have affirmed my faith in Cantor: he does, after all, get most of it right!

What was revolutionary about Cantor's book is that, as the jacket says, his was the "first comprehensive general history of the Middle Ages to centre on medieval culture and religion rather than political history."

A vital companion to this would be John Julius Norwich's three volume series on Byzantium and Marcia Colish's "Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition 400-1400 (Yale Intellectual History of the West)". Do not, under any circumstances bother with William Manchester's gravely flawed: "A World Lit Only By Fire" (for why I say that, see my review of that book).

Rating:
Summary: How we got here
Review: This is an excellent introduction to the Middle Ages and is thought provoking on many different levels. Although this is a history that looks at the Middle Ages as a whole, Cantor's method is to examine Germany, England, and France and to see how they were able to succeed and fail at differnt times during the period in question.

The country that did the best overall was England, due in a large part due to the politcal innovations of Henry II. Although smaller in terms of land area and population, Henry made England work better than either of the two countries. If anyone wonders how London could control 1/4 of the earth's surface, this si the time and place where this began. France and Germany were at the time little more than geographic designations (this is particularly the case with the latter). Effect centralized control was lacking for much of the period in question.

The Kings of France were dominated by the nobles. A strong king could make a difference from time-to-time, but the lack of the types of institutional innovations present in England clearly undermined effectiveness.

The sections on Germany are likewise instructive. Here the contest between church and state occurs more frequently than in the case of the other two. The inability of the Holy Roman Emperors to impose centralized control over the bishiprics, princes, electors and other members of the nobility was more pronounced here than elsewhere and competition with the church was even more pronounced. These conditions undermined the establishment of a political identity for German until the 1870s.

I have chosen to focus on one aspect of this remarkable book, but I would not wish to give the impression that the comparative histories of these three states are all that this book is about. Rather, this book provides the general reader with a greater understanding of the dynamics of the Middle Ages.

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Book
Review: This is truly a fascinating book. I am very interested in the history of Christianity as well as its affect on Western civilization. This book was an excellent starting point. From the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire through the middle ages, this book gave a great review of how Europe developed. Since the church was so instrumental in this development, it is discussed in great detail of course.

I am not sure which parts of the book I liked best. The first few chapters were excellent, but I literally could not put the book down for the last two chapters. I really mean this. I was on a plane when my glasses broke. I was so into the book that I struggled to read the last 50 pages without my glasses, at times holding the book at arms length and squinting really really hard.

If you enjoy history, I would most heartily recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: A good introduction for beginners, but lacking citations.
Review: _Civilization of the Middle Ages_ has many good points, andoverall I recommend it for readers with little priorbackground in medieval history and culture; only a couple of technical caveats prevent me from rating it higher.

The text flows well -- it's clear and easy to comprehend, and informative without being overly prosy, or laden with detail which would overwhelm a reader who is only beginning to explore the Middle Ages. Most readers should have no problem reading this book from cover to cover, enjoying and comprehending all of it, something one cannot always say about a history book. It's focused enough to have a coherent flow and structure, while still ranging wide enough to cover a number of diverse topics; the book doesn't get stuck in a rut of politics or church history or some such, the way some introductory texts do.

Unfortunately, the book is made less useful to scholars by the lack of either a bibliography or footnotes. (There is a recommended reading list, which I usually avoid, but in this case it's wonderfully detailed, and almost worth the price of the paperback edition to a beginner who wants a list of reliable sources for continuing study. But although it's a useful bonus, it doesn't make up for the lack of a bibliography.) This is clearly a book for the beginner or general reader, and one doesn't expect extensive footnotes in such a book, but one does expect to see a bibliography. As it is, the reader who wants to pursue some point of interest must begin from practically a standing start. This is a major flaw, and took about two points off of my numerical rating.

Aside from the lack of citations, I'm very pleased with this book. I feel it's a good introduction for a beginner who's interested in medieval history, and wants more than just a listing of who fought who, who won, and who was king at the time. So long as the reader keeps in mind that history books _should_ be footnoted, and should include a list of sources used, this is an excellent starting point. I found it to be about as readable as Joseph and Frances Gies' medieval books, with considerably less of the lack of specific detail which plagues the Gies' books -- the Gies' will often say that something was done in the Middle Ages, or in medieval Western Europe, or some similar broad reference, without saying specifically when or where, giving the reader the erroneous impression that medieval culture was a homogeneous monolith; Cantor does this much less frequently. Primarily because of this, I'd rate _Civilization of the Middle Ages_ a notch above the Gies' books.

Readers with a firm foundation in medieval history will likely be disappointed with this book, but such readers are not the target audience. The general reader will find the book readable and enjoyable. If the lack of citations make it less useful than it might be, this is compensated for, in my opinion, by Cantor's clear and flowing style. If all historians wrote like Cantor there'd likely be considerably more interest in the Middle Ages, and other times and places, than there is now. In my opinion this is at least as important as source citations.