Inventing the Middle Ages : Lives, Works and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the 20th Century

It is sometimes difficult to appreciate the extent to which our current perception of the Middle Ages, grounded in images of plagues, wars, kings, saints, knights and tournaments, is of comparatively recent origin. In what will surely prove a seminal work of historiography, Norman F. Cantor argues that our picture of the medieval world, far from having been excavated by systematic research, is quintessentially the creation of twentieth century historians whose spiritual and emotional outlooks coloured their interpretation of an entire epoch. These strong personalities and creative minds, who brought fresh insights about the past, effectively 'invented' the Middle Ages. Professor Cantor anatomises the story of that invention through the lives of twenty of the great medievalists of this century, beginning with F.W. Maitland, a 'secular saint' and self-taught scholar of incomparable ability, who slipped into historical research and brilliantly traced the emergence of English Common Law. Among the many other scholars Cantor cites are J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who, working against a background of war and the threatened disintegration of society, envisaged alternative morally ordered and inspiring worlds; Percy Schramm, a Nazi sympathiser, and Ernst Kantorowicz, who later attempted to conceal his earlier pro-Nazi leanings, who both studied medieval kingship; Marc Bloch, a Jew, killed while fighting with the French Resistance, who helped establish the method of the 'Annales' historians, using economic statistics to make broad sociological points; David Knowles, a Roman Catholic monk, who relived his conflicts with his own superiors through the trials of St Francis, and highlighted the medieval church's ambiguous sense of individuality; Joseph Strayer, who eulogised medieval bureaucrats whilst employed by the CIA; and Sir Richard Southern, who combined the conventional career of an Oxford don with a lyrical, original insight into the subtleties of medieval sensibility. In this stimulating, provocative and always intelligently written work, Professor Cantor fashions an immense body of learning in an entirely fresh way. Readers will come away fully informed of the essentials of the subject and also newly aware of the interconnection between medieval civilisation and the culture of the twentieth century.