Europe in the High Middle Ages 1150 - 1300

General History of Europe

by John H. Mundy

A revised and updated new edition of Professor Mundy's lively introduction to Europe 1150-1300. It provides a portrait of the social, economic, political and intellectual life of Latin Christendom in the period. Wherever possible the men and women of the high middle ages are allowed to speak for themselves as Professor Mundy makes wide use of contemporary sources xxx; bringing alive the complexities and concerns of people living in medieval times. Another strength of the book is the attention devoted to groups often marginalised in other histories; looking at the experience of women, for instance, and that of the Jews in a predominantly Christian society.

Genres: History, Medieval, Nonfiction, Medieval History

400 pages, Textbook Binding

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thematically presented history that often overwhelms while always edifying the reader to why this period is always fascinating to study.

Well-told histories are often just as interesting for the history they are telling retrospectively as they are for how the historian thinks about the history they are telling. Clearly, some of the zeitgeist of the historian’s world-view sneaks in within their story-telling and a reader does get a lesson in how historians thought differently about the same subject matter 20 or so years ago.

The author stays away from pernicious teleology and seldom justified his story telling of the past by the way things were when he wrote in 1973 and the revised second edition period of 1992.

It took me awhile to realize that there were two characters the author was shaping his narrative around and they popped-up frequently in the story: Thomas Aquinas and Dante. Once I realized their centrality to the story the author was telling I started to enjoy this book all the more.

The author does talk about the Guelphs and the Ghibellines though he did it at almost the speed of light and it was hard to keep track of what they really meant. Dante’s book De Monarchia was prominently featured in this book as well as his Divine Comedy (I strongly recommend De Monarchia and that book gives a good insight into how people thought in 1300). Dante wrote his Comedy as an encyclopedia which included the two hundred years which preceded him as well as more ancient history, and in order to understand his Comedy one needs to also understand this period of time. Humanism starts with Dante, or at least the re-centering of putting Man back into the equation as we are exiled awaiting a meaning worthy of our attention starts with 1309 or about the year Dante wrote the Divine Comedy.

The second character that stood out in this book was of course St. Thomas Aquinas. I’ve heard a scholar say that it’s possible to argue that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy partially in order to place Aquinas in heaven and tell the world of his importance. Of course, the Divine Comedy is much deeper than just that, but this history book really goes a long way in putting Dante in perspective and demonstrating the importance of St. Thomas.

There’s a reason that I love this period of history probably more than any other. Aquinas doesn’t happen in a vacuum and the events going around slightly before in history help create who he is. Reason justifying faith not faith justifying reason needed a brilliant thinker and Aquinas would have to stand on the shoulders of others while not actually looking down, and some of those shoulders are featured in this book. Though, of course, since this book was primarily Latin European history that meant Maimonides, Averroes and Aristotle are not prominently featured.

[Simon Hollway · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lapsed Catholics and atheists beware...this is a period of history during which the Petrine tentacles self-insemminated, metastasized and meta-mega-spawned all over the shop. No corner of Europe was left unreligioned and our brave author, Mr Mundy, is at proportionate pains to lay doctrinal eggs in his readers’ ears every other sentence.

In the spirit of semi-discIosure, I was really looking for a Blackadder-type caper through the late 1100s and the 12s, cavorting through a few battles and gambolling past a droit-de-seigneur barn-bonk-bonanza or two. Instead, this history prances upon the pinhead of St Peter & Son and is more a theological disquisition than either a gritty social history or a chronological Eurovision of facts, figures, minstrelled strums, blackened gums and racked thumbs. I was in the wrong store from the off.

A light dusting of arcane academic language and Mundy’s unapologetically technical phraseology sans glossary, served up a few unwanted speedbumps on what wasn’t exactly a high-octane race track to begin with. Self-consciously urbane without always being germane.

A rewarding read if you’re after the interplay of state and church and the law courts and the church and Francis Bacon and the church from 1150-1300. If you want more meat with your veg and less church with your pudding then this isn’t for you.

[Lee Broderick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although first published in 1973, the fact that this book is now into its third edition shows its continuing relevance and regard. Written as an undergraduate textbook and covering all facets of Latin European history (as defined by the reach of the Roman Catholic Church) between the years AD1150 and AD1309 it is necessarily dense. The period examined could be argued as one in which ideas about philosophy, science, economics, politics and the church underwent development almost as profound and rapid as in the Early Modern period.

I think John H. Mundy may have been the first to coin the term "High Middle Ages" to describe this epoch between the Early Middle Ages (still sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages by those who went to school before the late 1970's) and the turbulent, warring Late Middle Ages and the fact that it has stuck as a term now often used by scholars goes some way to suggest the influence and success of this volume. The author divides the book into six themed sections (Europe; Economy; Society; Government; Thought and Church & State) which evidence its student oriented philosophy; allowing the reader to quickly ascertain a relevant passage to a research question. The quality of the writing though, however dense the text may be (and the last chapter, in particular, I found heavy going) means that it works equally well as a cover-to-cover read.

[Ned · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe people don't think anymore the way this author writes. Too bad.
What follows will be a reproduction of as much of the first chapter (and called the introduction) as I feel like typing. I'll probably add to it later. First published in 1973 and
Yeah, it starts like this.

"History is often beclouded, and each period has clouds specific to it. Medieval history's cloud is because Europe's culture was then ecclesiastical whereas today's is secular. Secular historians seek to find the origins of the institutions and thought they favour: when looking for today's spiritual ancestors, they vault back over the Middle Ages to Greek and Roman antiquity.
Prisoners of laicism, moderns who favour going to church, mosque or synagogue, experience there only a subculture, one threatened by secularism's greater culture. As a result, the friends of the Middle Ages are as bothersome as its enemies. They are those who, reacting against secular dominance, look back to earlier times in order to criticise the present. After recent European history, one understands their doubts about secularism, but their Middle Ages is often only partially similar to reality. Their idealised community of the medieval town, for example, is clearly partly fictional.
Modern research has defined the differences between classical, medieval and modern times, and contrasted the other-worldly emphasis of late antique and medieval thought with the this-worldly emphasis of moderns and of their predecessors in antiquity. This truthful distinction has, however, encouraged some to inscribe it in stone. To them, the latter promotes rational propositions, those within reach of natural demonstration, whereas the former's are religious, beyond, that is, the reach of the same. This causes some to make institutions coterminous with ideas: the Church [i]is[/i] religion, so to speak, and the State and other secular institutions [i]are[/i] reason. This overlooks the fact that, although there are many differences between the two ways of thinking, they have something in common, namely their love of indemonstrable propositions. Many present-day convictions about human free will, moral potential, the necessity of personal freedom for social and economic advancement, for example, and mankind's central role in the cosmos are as indemonstrable as any mystery found in Christianity, Judaism or Islam.
Using the ideas expressed in the words 'religious' or 'rational' to describe motives for human action is both traditional and valid. To reject either one of them in favour of the other, however is to misuse them. Some say, for example, that a person or group acted only for religious motives; others counter that they were animated by rational, economic, or material motives. One wonders if either one standing alone suffices to describe human actions.
These actions vary. Men and women play games. They turn prayer wheels, recite gods' names, make music, do puzzles and calculations. When done by one alone, they have little to do with the society in which a person lives, and seem instead to be means of testing one's harmony with the nature of things. When one plays with others or before an audience, however, play becomes a way of competing or joining with other men and women.
People hope that there is a natural order to which they can fit themselves, or of which they can make use. The desire is tied to society, but, rather like play, transcends the particular social world in which they live because the problems it tries to handle are uniform throughout history. These problems are those caused by birth, exuberant growth, sickness and death as well as hopes for freedom and love, and are expressed by a mixture of rational and religious passions and ideas. The desire to avoid death, for example, causes humanity both to people the other world with possibly imaginary souls and to work rationally to prolong life in this one.
The particularities of periods in which individuals live attract historians especially because they distinguish one age from another. They also bulk large in the sources for historical study, probably because humans spend little time being born, loving or dying and much in life's routines. Only sleep takes more time than these. Experience nevertheless teaches that the primal activities are more consequential because humans are mostly moved by the need and desire to attain love and retain life by finding and using the right order of things.
Historians should therefore try to recognise the similarities of human desire and need in the many languages, secular or ecclesiastical, technical or commonsensical, scientific or mystic, lent them by transient institutions, philosophies and religions. One recalls, for example, debates among even 'materialist' thinkers as to whether the ideas of their favourite intellectual forebears were mainly drawn from the thought of their time, or instead arose within themselves, having few or no outside sources. Such debaters, one guesses, rehearse arguments as indemonstrable as the old scholastic ones favouring natural or innate capacity versus the need for divine grace, arguments essentially about free will and determination. Once, moreover, the similarities of some modern and medieval propositions about mankind's role in natural history or under the deity are perceived, one can comprehend why humanity is addicted to the indemonstrable.
This addiction presumably derives from need: nobody can be sure that his or her cancer will not kill, and nobody that he or she is loved. All one can do is hope and play games. Although recourse to indemonstrable propositions often inhibits human freedom, history also shows that it sometimes helps it. Most institutions have been built on humanity's natural, reasonable and demonstrable needs for health, material welfare and a measure of freedom in the disposition of talents and goods. In late Rome, however, these normally healthy drives and their concomitant institutions were so overwhelmed by internal disruption and external attack that they became oppressive. Then, the need for relief or freedom forced the people to turn to the other world, the world of the indemonstrable. Although Christianity's obscurantism partly reflected a failure of nerve, it was also a liberating secession from service to State and society and from the often self-defeating race for wealth, learning and well-being. Rome's peoples rejected Greco-Roman earth-centered reason, religion and society."

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dávam tri hviezdičky, a to hlavne preto, že ide o náročné čítanie. Kniha samotná nie je zlá, len je príliš odborná a špecifická nato, aby si ju do ruky vzal niekto, kto sa o stredovek (hlavne o vrcholný stredovek, samozrejme) nezaujíma viac, než mu k jeho životu stačí. Za mňa pár osobných hodnotení:
- kniha je plná konkrétnych vyjadrení dobových aktérov. To z nej robí jednak skvelé zrkadlo do myšlienkového sveta doby, no jednak veľmi ťažké čítanie, ak náhodou nie ste odborník na intelektuálov stredoveku, čo pravdepodobne pri čítaní tejto knihy nebudete;
- ako hovorí aj krátka anotácia knihy, Mundy rozoberá sociálne, ekonomické, politické aj intelektuálne problémy vymedzenej doby. Nad tým všetkým však čnie konflikt Cirkev verzus Štát a Mundyho rozprávanie preto kladie veľký dôraz na cirkevné spory, problémy a tak ďalej. Na to sa treba pri čítaní pripraviť, i keď dejiny stredoveku sa bez poznania cirkvi a kresťanstva, dajú pochopiť pomerne ťažko (ak vôbec).
- kniha je plná dôležitých postrehov a úžasných informácií, len ich treba hľadať. Mundy niekedy ponúka tak veľa rôznych dobových pohľadov, že sa človek stratí aj v tom, že čo vlastne bola mainstreamová idea (napríklad v probléme absolútnej chudoby cirkvi) a čo underground.
- long story short, je to v podstate učebnica, ktorú by si mali prečítať hlavne študenti a učitelia histórie a možno laickí milovníci doby. To je v podstate aj úmysel knihy - aby slúžila ako pomôcka v akademickom svete.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author has been criticized for frequently assuming his reader has read many of the same books read by him, and, therefore doesn't need an explanation. There was, certainly, some of that. But I argue that looking something up offers a clear opportunity to learn something new. While pedantically explaining something of common knowledge, offers less. Would you learn? Then read books above your pay grade! Do you want entertainment? Well, you know, don't you!

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enlightening, if not dense.