Matthew Gabriele > Quotes

“Scientists can measure the oxygen isotopes in dental enamel to determine where in the world long-dead people were born. From the Bronze Age through to the medieval period, we’re finding people buried in British graves who were born in Asia and Africa. That number peaked, unsurprisingly, during the Roman period, but never falls to zero throughout the Middle Ages.”
― Matthew Gabriele, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

“Not only (supposedly) was he carried off to the gates of Hell by demons and only rescued by the apostle St. Bartholomew, Guthlac was threatened physically by non-Christian peoples, wild beasts, and duplicitous fellow monks.”
― Matthew Gabriele, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

“Too often, because we have the advantage of writing from our own present, from their future, we think of history as necessarily hurtling toward some predestined conclusion. But it never works like that.”
― Matthew Gabriele, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

“Even when she seemed to intervene at the moment of Guy’s death, this golden girl was thanking Gerbert for being a friend.”
― Matthew Gabriele, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

“Beginnings and endings are arbitrary; they frame the story that the narrator wants to tell.”
― Matthew Gabriele, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

“Political ritual requires repetition, consistency, tradition, in order to be reliable. For actions to take meaning everyone has to understand what that meaning is.”
― Matthew Gabriele, Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe – How Charlemagne's Dynasty Fell and Why It Matters for Understanding Political Collapse