Medieval history;: The life and death of a civilization

by Norman F. Cantor

Medieval History; The Life and Death of a Civilization

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History

622 pages, Hardcover

About the author

Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Cantor received his B.A. at the University of Manitoba in 1951. He went on to get his master's degree in 1953 from Princeton University and spent a year as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. He received his doctorate from Princeton in 1957 under the direction of the eminent medievalist Joseph R. Strayer.

After teaching at Princeton, Cantor moved to Columbia University from 1960 to 1966. He was a Leff professor at Brandeis University until 1970 and then was at SUNY Binghamton until 1976, when he took a position at University of Illinois at Chicago for two years. He then went on to New York University, where he was professor of history, sociology and comparative literature. After a brief stint as Fulbright Professor at the Tel Aviv University History Department (1987–88), he devoted himself to working as a full-time writer.

Although his early work focused on English religious and intellectual history, Cantor's later scholarly interests were far more diverse, and he found more success writing for a popular audience than he did engaging in more narrowly-focused original research. He did publish one monograph study, based on his graduate thesis, Church, kingship, and lay investiture in England, 1089-1135, which appeared in 1958 and remains an important contribution to the topic of church-state relations in medieval England. Throughout his career, however, Cantor preferred to write on the broad contours of Western history, and on the history of academic medieval studies in Europe and North America, in particular the lives and careers of eminent medievalists. His books generally received mixed reviews in academic journals, but were often popular bestsellers, buoyed by Cantor's fluid, often colloquial, writing style and his lively critiques of persons and ideas, both past and present. Cantor was intellectually conservative and expressed deep skepticism about what he saw as methodological fads, particularly Marxism and postmodernism, but also argued for greater inclusion of women and minorities in traditional historical narratives. In both his best-selling Inventing the Middle Ages and his autobiography, Inventing Norman Cantor, he reflected on his strained relationship over the years with other historians and with academia in general.

Upon retirement in 1999, Cantor moved to Miami, Florida, where he continued to work on several books up to the time of his death.

Reviews

[sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very excellent intro to medieval history and thought. Particularly enjoyed the attention paid to the investiture crisis and the transition from medieval to the renaissance (if there was such a thing).

[Stephen Hoogerhyde · Rating 2 out of 5]

To the best of my recollection, this is the first book on medieval history I have read. Consequently, there was much for me to learn. The book wasn't quite what I expected; it's more of a lengthy historiographical essay than a recitation of historical events and figures. Thus occasionally the time frame gets a little confusing, since he is crafting his book around themes rather than strictly recounting events in chronological order. Nevertheless, he does proceed from the second century to the fifteenth.

Cantor did an excellent job of outlining the differences between the early, middle, and later middle ages. Along with that he stressed certain themes, two in particular: the emergence of a distinctive western European civilization, and the always prominent and impactful interactions between church and state, church in this case being the Roman Catholic Church alone.

It should be noted that this history is entirely Eurocentric. The Mediterranean world enters in only as it interacts with and impacts Europe. Africa and Asia are barely mentioned. For example, there is only one brief mention of the Mongols, despite the fact that Genghis Khan and his sons conquered more than twice as much territory as any other person in history, conquered the most densely populated civilizations of the thirteenth century, and connected Europe and China through trade and diplomatic contacts.

Cantor goes into depth discussing various theological and ecclesiastical developments throughout the period, and illustrates how Aristotle and Plato continued to have great influence on both church and state. I was impressed with how well he understood the sometimes complicated theological debates, and how they affected the laity as well as the clergy.

If you are interested in medieval history, this would not be a bad book with which to start.

[Erin Zelnio · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is 60 years old, and it shows. Written at a time when history as a discipline was undergoing a radical change, it attempts to be impartial. Yet Cantor shows this was still very much a transitional period, and he was very much a product of his own upbringing. At least twice within the first 25 pages, he attempts to list homosexuality (specifically male) as one of the reasons for the Roman Empire's collapse in the West. No matter what your attitudes toward same-sex relations, current scholarship doesn't even touch on it, because its political relevance was nil. Other comments, such as Constantine being uneducated because he had the nerve to try and bargain with God, illustrate that in spite of his best intentions, Cantor is unable to keep his personal morality separate for the purposes of objectivity.

For its day, this likely was an excellent resource for the serious Medieval scholar. However, the sun set on that day a long time ago. Its possible use remains as an artifact of historiography, and little else.