The Medieval Mind

by Henry Osborn Taylor

The Middle Ages! They seem so far away; intellectually so preposterous, spiritually so strange. Bits of them may touch our sympathy, please our taste; their window-glass, their sculpture, certain of their stories, their romances,-as if those straitened ages really were the time of romance, which they were not, God knows, in the sense commonly taken. Yet perhaps they were such intellectually, or at least spiritually. Their terra-not for them incognita, though full of mystery and pall and vaguer glory-was not the earth. It was the land of metaphysical construction and the land of spiritual passion.

Genres: History

814 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1911

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Taylor was an historian, indeed a former head of the AHA, his two volume "History of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages" is an intellectual and cultural history with little attention paid to political events. As such it was very helpful for me in filling in the gaps left by the church history course sequence taken while in seminary. I still have much to learn about politics during the period.

This two volume set was picked up while helping to organize the foundation of the first public library in Bridgman, Michigan.