An Informative But Very Spotty History of Medieval Europe
Written: Nov 30 '08
Product Rating:
Pros: Informative on northern Europe and Italy
Cons: Poor coverage of other areas, e.g. England and Islam
The Bottom Line: This book is thorough on what it discusses but its lack of coverage on other subjects such as Britain relegates it to the second rank.
buffoonery's Full Review: The Oxford History of Medieval Europe
The Middle Ages remains a subject of which an unfortunately large segment of the population is woefully ignorant. Judging from the education (a term used generously) my sons received in high school of the period, the terms they are most likely to remember are “Dark Ages”, “hypocritical popes”, and “miserable imperialistic Catholic crusading bastards.”
I would like to think that The Oxford History of Medieval Europe will put those calumnies to rest. At least, most of them.
This book is a paperbook edition of the well-known (amongst readers of the subject, anyway) Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe, the key differences being that this book is in paperback and has fewer illustrations. Otherwise, you’re getting the same package. The chronology runs from 400-900 A.D., encompassing the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West to the flowering of the Renaissance in Italy. Edited by Oxford historian George Holmes, it contains an introduction and close written by him and six chapters written by various scholars on the following topics:
1) The Transformation of the Mediterranean, 400-900
2) The Northern World in the Dark Ages (there’s that calumny again), 400-900
3) The Society of Northern Europe in the High Middle Ages, 900-1200
4) Northern Europe Invades the Mediterranean, 900-1200
5) The Mediterranean in the Age of the Renaissance, 1200-1500
6) The Civilization of Courts and Cities in the North, 1200-1500
While this appears to be a decent survey of the subject, the book is better on some subjects than others. It is very good on early matters such as the collapse of the Roman West and formation of the northern barbarian kingdoms. The significance and unifying effects of the Papacy are well explored as are the arts and culture of the High Middle Ages, such as the growth of the great universities. Commerce is also given much attention as, naturally, the great dynastic kingdoms and their magnates, running from the Merovingians to Charlemagne to the French kings and German emperors.
Hence, this book’s virtue is to provide the reader with a broad overview of European history over the course of a millennium that saw it fall into fragmentation but to slowly emerge into a society that we, from our 21st century perspective, could begin to recognize as modern. It was this society that would close the period with the discovery of the New World yet soon, almost in parallel, fall into religious fragmentation and acrimony with the coming of the Reformation.
Yet the book is curiously and seriously deficient on other subjects. Medieval England is given little attention and, indeed, William the Conqueror is barely mentioned. The War of the Roses and rise of the Tudors are barely mentioned. The influence and effects of Islam are vastly underexamined. And if one wishes to learn much about the kingdoms and history of Poland and the Balkans, one needs to look elsewhere.
In sum, then, we have a reasonably competent history of what would become France, Germany and Italy as they existed from 400-1500. And in that regard, the book is informative and enlightening. After Rome’s fall, one would expect a painful interregnum and we see that in Europe, especially in the northern, during the early period. But the book shows that, by the High Middle Ages, Europe reached a level of artistic and commercial significance that was high indeed. On the other hand, the book has serious omissions. A more thorough and wide-ranging study may be found in Norman Cantor’s excellent Norman Cantor The Civilization of the Middle Ages, which I very strongly recommend.
This book, however, gets three stars for its lack of coverage.
Covering a thousand years of history, this volume tells the story of the creation of Western civilization in Europe and the Mediterranean. Now availab...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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