Beatrice's Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Mark Gregory Pegg

Mark Gregory Pegg's history of the Middle Ages opens and closes with martyrdom, the first that of a young Roman mother in a North African amphitheater in 203 and the second a French girl burned to death beside the Seine in 1431. Both Vibia Perpetua and Jeanne la Pucelle died for their Christian beliefs, yet that for which they willingly sacrificed their lives connects and separates them. Both were divinely inspired, but one believed her deity shared the universe with other gods, and the other knew that her Creator ruled heaven and earth. Between them, across the centuries, lives were shaped by the ebb and flow of the divine and the human. Here is the story of people struggling in life and in death to understand themselves and their relationship to God.

Beatrice's Last Smile interweaves vivid portraits of such individuals to offer a sweeping and immersive story. Some are of enduring renown ― Augustine, Muhammad, Charlemagne, Heloise ―and others are obscure. An Egyptian youth fighting demons in the desert as the first monk; a Briton becomes a holy man after enslavement in Ireland; an emperor in Constantinople watches as rioters torch the city; a old Syrian monk advises the English on sex; the soul of a Merovingian noble flies through the night sky to heaven; an Irish warrior surfs the waves like a dolphin as he flees the Vikings; a crusader's boots squelch with blood on the streets of Jerusalem; a troubadour sings of love; a Muslim lord expresses admiration of the Templars; a pope proclaims that Christendom encompasses all time and space; a barefoot Franciscan friar visits the Great Khan of the Mongols; a Parisian rabbi argues for the holiness of the Talmud; and a poet laments being alive amid the horror of the Black Death. Together,
they take readers from the vastness of the Roman Empire to small communities between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, from the nomads of the Asian steppes to the triumphant Church of Latin Christendom.

Beatrice's Last Smile offers a pulsating history of the the passionate belief in the old gods that yields to a cosmos shaped by one; the transition from a penitential culture to a confessional one; the universal obsession with imitating Christ. The book is named for the moment in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy when his long-dead love, Beatrice, smiles one final time at Dante in paradise before turning away to look eternally upon the face of God.

Mark Gregory Pegg's epic narrative captures a millennium within that fleeting smile, in ways that modern readers will find illuminating and haunting.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Religion, Philosophy, Medieval History, European History

504 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2023

Reviews

[Brian Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pegg is a good storyteller; he knows how to anchor a narrative with human stories. An historian who "believe(s) in historical truth", who is - for example - ready to weigh the veracity of Islam's origins. He is equally penetrating about Christian assumptions, pointing to the fact that under Constantine and subsequent Romanised Christians the "old gods" were tolerated, even as they were recognised as inferior to the High God of Judeo-Christianity. But what, you may well ask, has this all to do with the "Middle Ages"? It is part of the "New"ness and value of this book that it is so concerned with tracing the origins of the medieval state of mind. Pegg applies the lessons of the groundbreaking "Late Antiquity" research of the last half century (which Peter Brown highlights in his recent book Journeys of the Mind) to cast new light on the period that followed.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strangely compiled book that covers the creation of Europe through a Latin Christian perspective. The author has read many representative books of the time period and summarizes them for the reader.

There was a large overlap with this book and the Great Course series I’ve recently watched “Warriors, Queens, and Intellectuals: 36 Great Women Before 1400”. The Latin Christian women featured in that series seemed to have almost all popped-up in this book. In addition, I was struck how much of an overlap there was with the characters from Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Dante wrote not only as an allegory but also as an Encyclopedia for his readers, and a familiarity with Dante made for a familiarity with most of this book. (Doesn’t everyone read Thomas Aquinas’ Summa, or Boethius, or Augustine, Plotinus, Plutarch and so on?).

The author said something that surprised me because I tend to think it’s not true. He said that it’s possible Mohammad is a fabrication. Unfortunately for me, I just finished Richard Carrier’s book “On the Historicity of Jesus.” I think that Carrier was full of it, and I don’t think Pegg is right either.

Dante put Mohammad in the Eighth circle of Hell and the ninth ditch because of what he thought of as schism, but I hardly think it merits a discussion that Mohammad didn’t even exist as Pegg implied (stated?), nor is Carrier’s thesis worth one's time.

The story in this book was not a story of how two cultures (Christian and Muslim) merged and learned from each other. At best, it was a hodgepodge of interesting mostly Latin Christian stories that covered too much at once and needed a tighter theme to hold the narrative together.

Beatrice’s smile and Perpetua’s willful martyrdom don’t always make a compelling history by themselves unless they are inside a compelling narrative. The Great Course series above covered a surprisingly bunch of the people and their stories featured in this book and it tied them together with a better coherence.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweeping narrative of waves of religious theory and fervor, territorial transformations and changing identities - personal and geopolitical - from the end of the Roman Empire til 1400s. Accessible, filled with delightful and illuminative details.

[Mark Riddell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written prose, this book spans the 3rd to 15th centuries, exploring the evolving relationship between humanity and the divine. I particularly enjoyed the use of vivid vignettes to progress the narrative and to bring to life a host of colorful historical figures. An intellectually rich yet easily accessible read.

[Emylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It both did and did not do what it set out to do. I liked the sub-parts, more or less, though sometimes it was confusing. It was a little all over the place. I felt like Pegg left out some major waves in Latin Christendom, and also glossed over some stuff, but I thought it still was a good refresher. Maybe not for newbies to the subject, though.

[Gage Fowlkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great prof, good guy, unbelievable turtleneck game. If you read and loved Dominion and want to read one of the scholars that Tom draws from, I mean it should be Peter Brown… but then yeah read Pegg. Also, helpful tip: read it in an Australian accent and it’ll be like you’re in class with him.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable voyage via short stories and vignettes, from Late Antiquity to High Medieval "Christianitas" to Late Medieval Europe; from a penitential age to a confessional age to an individual age.

[Alexis Kaelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great. A religious, philosophical history of Western Europe's Middle Ages, tracking the sense of self of individuals. I thought it a great read.

[Clay Kallam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes it makes sense to narrow the focus -- and with a subject as sprawling as the Middle Ages, Mark Gregory Pegg made the wise choice to single out the evolving ideas of Christianity as the central pole of "Beatrice's Last Smile."

Naturally, this means leaving a lot out, but the benefit is that looking through this window casts a new light on familiar topics (Thomas Aquinas, to name one) and adds depth and texture to the familiar narrative.

The "Beatrice" refers to Dante's Beatrice, who ends "The Divine Comedy" with a heavenly smile, and Pegg traces the Christian urge to be worthy of that smile through nearly a thousand years. And though we tend to think of Middle Age Catholicism as a litany of popes and dogmatic decrees, Pegg makes it clear that there were powerful religious changes that had significant impacts on the way the Middle Ages unfolded.

For example, the persecution of Catholics in Southern France in the 12th and 13th century had nothing to do with the "Cathars," who Pegg claims never existed, but rather the feeling that the loss of the Holy Land to Islam was indicative of pervasive sin throughout Christendom -- and so it was necessary to root out that sin with fire and blood.

Similar insights into the twists and turns of medieval history appear throughout the book, and Pegg is an engaging writer. So really, this is a 4.5, and those who love to read history will find "Beatrice's Last Smile" a rewarding book.

[Desirae · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid and evidently original history of the Middle Ages, focusing on how people’s attitudes toward religion, the ancient gods, the monotheistic God, and formal churches changed through 2000 years of history. There’s much focus on individuals, famous (mostly men, mostly religious) and ordinary. But the takeaway for me was the sheer horror of a totalitarian religion (as Christianity strengthened over the centuries) to the point where it could tell you what to think, how to act, what to say, and what to believe--and if you varied so much as a hair’s breadth you were a heretic (never clearly defined) who could be punished with a savagery that takes the breath away. (When in doubt, kill the Jews.) This is a book about Sadism masquerading as holiness and I found it very depressing.

[Sweta Haldar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of the most accessible works of academic history I've ever read. It's obviously deeply and rigorously researched and incredibly well sourced but it also reads like a story. The writer really brings to life these characters that are familiar to anyone familiar with European history: Charlemagne, Constantine, Abelard and Heloise (as well as some more obscure figures that I hadn't heard of before). Pegg is a gifted writer in addition to being an obviously very talented historian. If you're a Middle Ages fan or a history hobbyist, I think you'd enjoy this book.

[Jamie]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

It lacked an interesting narrative. The events were interesting, but they weren't told in a way that connected them to the reader.

B. Grizenko

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing history AND excellent sleeping pill. Took me ages to finish.as the narrator kept putting me to sleep. Total nerd alert!