Book Review: Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths



Reviewed by John Peterson

In 1917, Chesterton published A Short History of England, a book intended to correct the falsehoods and distortions found in popular histories of the Middle Ages. Chesterton opened with the case of historian John Richard Green, whose Short History of the English People was published in eight volumes between 1892 and 1894. This work had a very large section devoted to “Puritan England.”

“But,” Chesterton pointed out with simple defiance, “England was never Puritan.”

In 1977, the historian RĂ©gine Pernod took up the cause from the point of view of France, and Ignatius Press has done us a service with a new English edition of Pernod's brief and readable monograph. Rather than Chesterton's chronological structure, the late French scholar divided her book into themes or general areas of misunderstanding and misinformation. She shows in her first chapter, for example, how the Renaissance is thought to be the rebirth of interest in classical civilization and letters, a development that came to fruition in the sixteenth century. Pernod shows that it was not interest in the classics that was reborn but rather a slavish imitation of classical forms and rules. It is by the standards of classical Greece and Rome that medieval art and culture came to be unjustly and ignorantly despised and dismissed, she argues.

Other areas that the author covers include the inherent democracy of rule by local custom in feudal Europe versus the rule of legal authority in the modern centralized state. Pernod makes the same point about women's place in society, showing the elevated stature of women before the older concepts of ancient Greece and Rome were reintroduced. She reminds us that in classical times women were excluded from all official functions. It is the classical model that modern feminists should attack &#0151 not the medieval. She also reminds us that Christian peoples reverted to the institution of slavery only with the rise of the modern colonial empires.

Along the way, the reader learns or is reminded of a wealth of fascinating smaller points about medieval times. We are reminded that fifth-century monks, who laboriously transcribed and preserved ancient writings, replaced the scroll with a new invention we now call “the book.” We're reminded that musical notation dates from the seventh century. Pernod also informs us that Crusade is a modern word, and at the time of those excursions they were called “pilgrimages” or “expeditions.” She reminds us that it was in the thirteenth century that Stephen Langton divided the Bible into the system of chapters and verses that both Christians and Jews use today.

This is a book to be read and then passed along to a favorite college student. It would also be a handy way to answer a friend who says that some heinous crime or outrage was “positively medieval” in its barbarity. As if the history of the latest hundred years offered nothing other than lessons in kindness and harmony!

(John Peterson writes courtesy of Gilbert!, The Magazine of G.K. Chesterton.)

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