Recommended Reading
There is no right or wrong way to become interested in history. Nor is there any one magic route to building a strong base of historical knowledge.
The only surefire giveaway that you have not read enough history is if you misquote George Santayana about those who do not study history being doomed to repeat it. They can’t. History does not repeat itself, although sometimes it rhymes.
Modern satirist, author, and comic strip artist Scott Adams has put it more accurately: “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat the things that appear in history books but never actually happened” (emphasis mine). (See above link, on how history rhymes.)
Perhaps you are one of those readers who picked up the encyclopedia at age seven and read your way through to the end by age twelve. (Full disclosure: I didn’t, but I love reference books. Can you tell?) Perhaps you prefer novels to non-fiction. Perhaps you read only articles you find in your social media feed. Perhaps you like listening to audio books.
It is all to the good!
Back in the Middle Ages, books were expensive. Prior to the invention of the printing press, books had to be copied by hand, so even the wealthiest readers might own only a few. Students at university would buy their books in pieces, one section at a time. Avid readers might keep a commonplace book with blank pages for copying out favorite passages from books they had borrowed. Those who could afford only one book would most likely have a book of Hours for saying the Office of the Virgin Mary. The printing press became the commercial success that it did only because there was already an audience eager and hungry for books.
People were hungry for books because they were hungry for stories—stories like the ones they heard the preachers tell in the marketplace or the minstrels at court. Stories like the lector of a monastery might tell over dinner. Stories like the ones told by the merchants and travelers from places to the East.
I will be telling you stories in the videos for this course in the hope of enticing you to read more.
Here are a few places you might start before venturing out into the wild on your own.
****
The Cambridge Medieval History, planned by J. B. Bury; edited by H. M. Gwatikin, J.P. Whitney, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911-1967)
College Textbooks
 |
| St. Anne teaches the Virgin Mary to read Grand Hours of Anne of Brittany Illuminated by Jean Bourdichon Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms lat. 9474, fol. 197v |
Modern satirist, author, and comic strip artist Scott Adams has put it more accurately: “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat the things that appear in history books but never actually happened” (emphasis mine). (See above link, on how history rhymes.)
Perhaps you are one of those readers who picked up the encyclopedia at age seven and read your way through to the end by age twelve. (Full disclosure: I didn’t, but I love reference books. Can you tell?) Perhaps you prefer novels to non-fiction. Perhaps you read only articles you find in your social media feed. Perhaps you like listening to audio books.
It is all to the good!
Back in the Middle Ages, books were expensive. Prior to the invention of the printing press, books had to be copied by hand, so even the wealthiest readers might own only a few. Students at university would buy their books in pieces, one section at a time. Avid readers might keep a commonplace book with blank pages for copying out favorite passages from books they had borrowed. Those who could afford only one book would most likely have a book of Hours for saying the Office of the Virgin Mary. The printing press became the commercial success that it did only because there was already an audience eager and hungry for books.
People were hungry for books because they were hungry for stories—stories like the ones they heard the preachers tell in the marketplace or the minstrels at court. Stories like the lector of a monastery might tell over dinner. Stories like the ones told by the merchants and travelers from places to the East.
I will be telling you stories in the videos for this course in the hope of enticing you to read more.
Here are a few places you might start before venturing out into the wild on your own.
****
The Cambridge Medieval History, planned by J. B. Bury; edited by H. M. Gwatikin, J.P. Whitney, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911-1967)
- Vol. I: The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms (1911)
- Vol. II: The Rise of the Saracens and the Foundation of the Western Empire (1913)
- Vol. III: Germany and the Western Empire [from 814 to ca. 1000] (1922)
- Vol. IV: The Eastern Roman Empire 717-1453 (1923)
- Vol. IV: The Byzantine Empire Part I: Byzantium and its Neighbors (1966)
- Vol. IV: The Byzantine Empire Part II: Government, Church and Civilization (1967).
- Vol. V: Contest of Empire and Papacy [from ca. 1000 to 1198] (1926)
- Vol. VI: Victory of the Papacy (1929)
- Vol. VII: Decline of Empire and Papacy (1932)
- Vol. VIII: The Close of the Middle Ages (1936)
- Vol. 1: The Later Roman Empire to the Twelfth Century
- Vol. 2: The Twelfth Century to the Renaissance
College Textbooks
- William Chester Jordan, Europe in the High Middle Ages, 3rd edition (London: Penguin Books, 2001)
- Barbara Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages, 5th edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018)
- Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter, Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1475, 6th edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 1998)
Classics
Historical fiction- Henry Adams, Mont-Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
- James J. Walsh, The Thirteenth: Greatest of Centuries (1907)
- Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919)
- Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth-Century (1927)
- Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 2 vols. (1939)
- R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (1953)
- Cities and Towns in the Middle Ages
- War in the Middle Ages
- Knights and Samurai
- Religion and Society in the Medieval West
- The Arts of Language in the Middle Ages: The Trivium
- Medieval Christian Mythology
- Mary and Mariology
- Animals in the Middle Ages
- Tolkien: Medieval and Modern
- Additional graduate level syllabi in theology, devotion, liturgy, and prayer
- Medieval European History Graduate Starter List
- Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1820); The Betrothed and The Talisman (1825)
- Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831)
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company (1891); Sir Nigel (1906)
- Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter, 3 vols. (1920-1922); The Master of Hestviken, 4 vols. (1925-1927)
- Elizabeth Janet Gray, Adam of the Road (1943)
- Helle Haase, In a Dark Wood Wandering (1949)
- Marguerite de Angeli, The Door in the Wall (1949)
- Cynthia Harnett, The Wool-Pack (1951)
- T.H. White, The Once and Future King (1958)
- Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings, 7 vols. (1955-1977)
- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (1983); Baudolino (2000)
- Ellis Peters, The Cadfael Chronicles, 20 vols. (1977-1994)
- Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons (1985), Falls the Shadow (1988), The Reckoning (1991); The Sunne in Splendour (1982)
- Dorothy Dunnett, King Hereafter (1982); The House of Niccolò (1986-2000)
- Jan Guilluo, The Crusades Trilogy (1998-2000)
- Alfred J. Andrea and Andrew Holt, eds., Seven Myths of the Crusades (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2015)
- Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)
- Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History, 3rd edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
- Thomas Madden, A Concise History of the Crusades (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1999)
Series of primary sources
- Early English Text Society
- Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
- Fathers of the Church Patristic Series and Fathers of the Church Medieval Continuations (Catholic University of America Press)
- Classics of Western Spirituality (Paulist Press)
- Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Harvard University Press)
- Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures (University of Toronto Press)
I am so glad you include The Once and Future King. I have an old copy that is falling apart and underlined with comments scribbled in the margins. It is one of the few differences I have with C.S. Lewis. He didn't like it at all.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend your husband look at Timothy Law, "When God Spoke Greek," on the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. That will give him a better sense of why the modern Hebrew version is not what the New Testament authors were reading.
ReplyDelete