THE MIDDLE AGES by Morris Bishop
I’ve mentioned before that THE MIDDLE AGES by Morris Bishop is one of my favorite nonfiction books. It is not so much a linear history as it is an overview, with each chapter focusing upon a different part of medieval society – the nobles, the church, the peasants, the townsmen, and so forth. The book has some splendid passages. Like this one about the pride of the nobility:
“When all games ended, the knight brooded on his sins and made his peace with God. He built and endowed a chapel, and paid to have masses said forever for the rescue of his soul. For a fee, he could be buried in a monk’s robe…These nobles were the humble. Mostly, however, the great did not lose their pride in death. We see in a thousand churches their effigies clad in their best armor, sword at side, with their wives beside them and their dogs at their feet, ready to rise, equipped to demand their due at Judgment Day.”
Or this part about the medieval church:
“If one concentrates on the church’s shortcomings, which are after all more striking and diverting than its quiet labors, one sees it as smug and somnolent, content with its daily routine, unadventurous. Nevertheless, the church continued to inspire its adepts with conscientious zeal. Many poor parsons, unregarded and unrecorded, did more than their duty to their parishes; many served knowledge and wisdom in school and scriptorium; many were vouchsafed moments of mystic illumination; many, by holy living and holy dying, preserved a model of Christian character – humble, chaste, obedient, charitable, filled with consciousness of God and abounding in love.”
Or the dangers of medieval food safety:
“Danger lurked in made-up meats. A thirteenth-century Paris preacher tells of a customer who informed his butcher that he should have his sausages cheaper since he had been a faithful client for seven years. The butcher replied: ‘Seven years! And you’re still alive!'”
Or this part about teachers in the medieval university:
“He then invited his examiners to a banquet, a custom that has regrettably lapsed…It is reported of one stingy initiate that ‘the people invited to his banquet were so poorly fed that they did not even desire to drink.’ But see the consequence: “He opened his course with novices and hired listeners.'”
At the time of this writing, THE MIDDLE AGES is only $2.99 USD on Kindle, and is very highly recommended.
-JM