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Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe
Unavailable
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe
Unavailable
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe
Audiobook10 hours

Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe

Written by Thomas Cahill

Narrated by John Lee

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.

By placing the image of the Virgin Mary at the center of their churches and their lives, medieval people exalted womanhood to a level unknown in any previous society. For the first time, men began to treat women with dignity and women took up professions that had always been closed to them.

The communion bread, believed to be the body of Jesus, encouraged the formulation of new questions in philosophy: Could reality be so fluid that one substance could be transformed into another? Could ordinary bread become a holy reality? Could mud become gold, as the alchemists believed? These new questions pushed the minds of medieval thinkers toward what would become modern science.

Artists began to ask themselves similar questions. How can we depict human anatomy so that it looks real to the viewer? How can we depict motion in a composition that never moves? How can two dimensions appear to be three? Medieval artists (and writers, too) invented the Western tradition of realism.

On visits to the great cities of Europe-monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable Florence of Dante and Giotto-Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world. Bursting with stunning four-color art, MYSTERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES is the ultimate Christmas gift book.


From the Hardcover edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 24, 2006
ISBN9781415932841
Unavailable
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe
Author

Thomas Cahill

Thomas Cahill is a scholar and writer.

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Reviews for Mysteries of the Middle Ages

Rating: 3.7131146404371584 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A good read, with a lot of great information about the Middle Ages. My biggest issue with this particular book is the attempt by the author at pushing a feminist view of history, instead of just letting the history speak for itself.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    While parts of the book were profoundly interesting, I found the author's writing style to be jarring. He strives for accessibility and loses credibility in sweeping generalizations that frankly just irritated me. The book is beautifully produced, however, with a really nice integration of medieval manuscript sensibilities and modern book aesthetics.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In popular imagination the medieval period is a time of ignorance and superstition, fear and violence, and crushing religious intolerance of anything the Church was against. Mysteries of the Middle Ages is the fifth volume of Thomas Cahill’s ‘Hinges of History’ series, focusing on the individuals in the High Middle Ages who shaped Western society that we know today. Over the course of 300+ pages, Cahill sets out to give his reader a new way to look at the Middle Ages.Cahill begins the book not during the Middle Ages, but in the city of Alexandria in Egypt looking at how the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions began their long processes of synthetization began before exploring how the Romans became the Italians as a way to differentiate between the Greek East and Latin West for the rest of the book. Then beginning with Hildegard of Bingen, Cahill makes the reader look at the Middle Ages in a vastly different way by showing the power and importance of 12th century Abbess who would one day be declared a saint then turned his attention to a woman of secular power, that of Eleanor of Aquitaine who held political power in a significant way while also allowing the developing “courts of love” evolve. This evolving form of culture spread into the Italian peninsula and influenced a young man from Assisi, Francis who would shift this emphasis of earthly love into spiritual love. The focus of the spiritual then shifted to Peter Abelard and St. Thomas Aquinas who became to emphasis the thoughts of Aristotle over those of Plato in theological discussions while Roger Bacon used Aristotle to begin examining the world around him and thus science that we see today. Yet the world around those during the High Middle Ages began to influence art and literature in both secular and spiritual ways from the Cathedral of Chartres to the works of Dante and Giotto would have influences even to today. Although Cahill readily admits that he could have and wanted to discuss more individuals from a wider swath of Europe, he does an adequate job in showing that the Middle Ages were not what the popular view of the time period was believed to be. Cahill several times throughout the book emphasizes that the Middle Ages, especially from the 12th to the early 14th centuries, were not a time of stagnate culture that the humanists of the Renaissance began calling it. However, Cahill’s asides about Islamic culture as well as the Byzantines were for the most part a continuation of centuries-long mudslinging or a product of today’s ideological-religious conflicts and ironically undermined one of his best arguments, the role of Catholicism in shaping Western society. Cahill’s Catholicism was that of all the individuals he wrote about, who were Christians, not the Church and its hierarchy that over the course of the High Middle Ages became a point of embarrassment to both lay and cleric alike.Mysteries of the Middle Ages shows the beginnings of the synthesis of the two strains of Western society, Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian, that Thomas Cahill has built up to in his previous four books. As a popular history it very well written, but its flaws of modern and centuries old prejudice undercut a central theme Cahill was developing and wrote about at the end of the book. Yet I cannot but call it a good book to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting European personalities of the middle ages.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Enjoyed another perspective on the Middle Ages, although the story on some individuals did get a bit slow at times.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thomas Cahill is an academic best known for his "Hinges of History" series. I read the four previous books in the series and written reviews about two of them: "How the Irish Saved Civilization", "The Gifts of the Jews". The fifth book in the series is about the "Mysteries of the Middle Ages". Cahill takes a different approach in this book. Whilst the first four books centered around one topic (Irish clergy in the Middle Ages, the Jews' contribution to mankind, Jesus and the Ancient Greeks), in this book Cahill picks a few "over arching" themes that, in his mind, define the Middle Ages and writes about them from the perspective of one major city. So Alexandria is used to describe Reason; Bingen and Chartres to describe the worship of the Virgin Mary; Florence - poetry; Ravenna - politics; and so on. The book is also different from the previous ones in its beautiful layout and the images and illustrations that adorn every page. Whilst I don't think Cahill has unearthed any "mysteries" in this book, he deserves credit for the presentation and popular (sometimes too popular) style of writing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was yet another masterful entry in Thomas Cahill's Hinges of History series. In this book, Cahill covers the Middle Ages (about the years 400-1400), specifically focusing on developments in Western Europe during this period. The only complaints that I have about this book are that Cahill doesn't seem to have done his research for this book as well as he did for the previous installments in the series. Even though Cahill points out in the final chapters that the negative opinion of the Middle Ages that most students are taught even today in schools is an anti-Catholic fabrication of a later age, I was rather disappointed to see that he repeats several myths that emerged from this besmirching of the Middle Ages without questioning them. Thankfully, these historical flaws play a very minor part in the overall work. In fact, most of them are said either in passing or even as footnotes. This book remains a wonderful, insightful, and illuminating read nonetheless.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have always preferred fiction, but my interest in the Middle Ages drew me to this book. So glad it did---it sparkles with engaging knowledge and damn good writing. WOW. What a find!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I have fond -- if vague -- memories of Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization, which came out over a decade ago. So when I saw this book, I decided to get it. And I've been enjoying it so far. But on page 87 Cahill goes off on this half-page diatribe about how guilt is the greatest gift the Judeo-Christian tradition has given the Western world. He says that without it we would all be psychopaths. WTF? What about compassion and empathy? Why do we have to see ourselves as sinners in order to be good people?So the author has just revealed his bias, and I'm not enjoying the book so much now. It's hard to trust an author who thinks that way. I'm not saying I have to agree with everything an author writes -- far from it -- but to accept someone's expertise you have to trust them. Somebody who thinks Catholic guilt is a good thing is someone I can't believe.I'll put Mysteries away for now. Maybe a few days' distance will let me get the bad taste of Cahill's rant out of my brain...
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book is best used for the excellent pictures.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cahills books generally deal with western history, though western history is permeated with the religions at least, that arose in the middle east, and most accounts begin with the middle east, Egypt and the fertile cresent centered in Mesopotamia. I have to admit that his books are in some way comforting, dealing with topics that are somewhat familiar to me. But, rather than simply presenting the events of history, he presents ideas and their impact. In this particular book I enjoyed reading about Hildebrand, an influential woman, and in Cahill's interpretation of the idea of Thomas Aquinas in contrast to those of Augustine. In short, he sees Augustine as more in line with Plato, with the metaphor of viewing reality from the cave and seeing shadows. But Aquinas, he sees as trusting the senses, and viewing the body as a good thing.I was also somewhat astonished to read that limbo had been out of favor in the Catholic church for some time, since I had learned about it as a child in Catholic school. This was in a section about Dante and the Divine Comedy, when he was talking about Dante's difficulty with the idea of the unbaptized going to hell. Limbo was a later solution to this difficulty, but, apparently has been de-emphasized along with the idea that the unbaptized go to hell.He has some scathing things to say about the recent sexual scandals in the Catholic church and Pope JohnPaul II and Bernard, implicating them as part of the coverup and in the church's treatment of the victims. I assumed as I read this that he was writing as someone who was raised Catholic, and looking it up I found that he was educated by Jesuits, and is currently a practicing Catholic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is probably as odd a history book as I've ever read. My final rating of 5 tentacles was somewhat surprising, giving the effort it was to get to the end of the book (there were more than a few times that I nearly aborted altogether). But I persevered...First, let's start with the production. Despite being a trade paperback, this book is the perfect example why the Kindle isn't ready for prime-time. Done in the manner of a medieval illuminated manuscript, the book is awash in colorful pictures showing medieval artwork, as well as various decorations in the margins. In places, an ornamental font dating back to the period was used. It is just absolutely beautiful.Before moving on to the content, I'd like to reference a newly-formed Historiography group on Librarything.com. The founder of the group asked in the first post what "school" everyone identifies with. I've yet to answer because I don't think it's a really simple question. But I have no doubt that my answer would be radically different from Cahill, which would, I think, explain why I had such difficulty getting through the book.Mysteries of the Middle Ages and the Beginning of the Modern World begins in the late Classical period and ends around the beginning of the Renaissance. That is a huge chunk of time. Rather than an encompassing overview, Cahill picks a trail of great people (one of the schools of Historiography, by the way) as he negotiates this wide swath of history. The book itself is really a long essay (and part two of a series at that, his How The Irish Saved Civilization comprising part 1). Thematic consistency is really only apparent late in the book, and only after reflection. Had I understood where he was going all along, the journey might have been less difficult. I don't often re-read books, but I suspect it would click much better if I read it again.Cahill admits at the end that the path he chose omits many other important forces during the period -- and some I would argue as more important than the path he chose. Cahill's subjects are, for the most part artists and clerics. The most interesting of his choices I thought was Eleanor of Aquitaine, but only because she, of all the major persons highlighted in the book, was most tied to political and military events that I am most familiar. Thomas Aquinas and Dante Alighieri likewise held my interest. Hildegarde? Bernard of Clairvaux? Francis of Assisi? Not so much.Cahill's writing style also left me a little disoriented. He has a tendency to use modern colloquialisms that just seems off in the context of the material. It is fine when he is drawing parallels to the modern world (ostensibly the purpose of the book), but frequently it's just a misplaced simile.Much of the book focused on religious (particularly Catholic) subject matter, and at times I felt conflicting vibes regarding Cahill's bias on the topic. In the end, I decided he was trying to remain aloof, although that meant treating material that seems nonsensical to us today with a manner approaching undue reverence. In connecting the past to the present, though, he writes this in criticism of the modern Catholic church, hammering home an adage raised early in the book, "the more that things change, the more they stay the same." In reference to modern church sex scandals, he writes:" Dante bewailed the selling of church offices, describing this practice as "Christ [being] bought and sold the whole day long" in the Rome of Pope Boniface VIII. That was, however, a far less depraved situation than the current one, where, as Dante would be forced to conclude, the twelve-year-old Christ, who conversed with the doctors of the law in the Temple of Jerusalem (in Luke 2:41-52), is made to give blow jobs and rammed up the ass the whole day long by doctors of the law of the New Jerusalem, while the high priests of the Temple stand guard at the entrances, lest any uninitiated outsiders should discover what is going on."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After reading "Mysteries", Cahill's fifth in his "Hinges of History" series, I felt like he was unable to keep the components of this volume tied together as well as he had in the earlier works in the series. This seems caused by the sheer breadth of what is called the Middle Ages. Cahill may have stretched the reasonable definition of a 'hinge' of history too far to keep the focus. However, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good introduction into the world that we call the Middle Ages. To say that this work is not as good as earlier books in Cahill's hinges of history series is not to say that this book is not a good read. Cahill set the bar pretty high with "How the Irish Saved Civilization". "Mysteries", unlike the earlier volumes, may require a second read to get it all tied together, but without that, this is still a solid series of essays on the Middle Ages. Cahill's instinct in bringing out the mind and heart of the historical characters in their world makes this an excellent introduction to the period and how it worked.Someone once said that to try to imagine the mind of an everyday person standing on a hillside looking out over a Middle Age landscape is comparable to trying to imagine the mind of a Martian. The whole frame of reference and beliefs that are (often unconsciously) the basis for how humans see the world has changed so radically in the past 800-1000 years. This seems true in many ways, but Cahill can make you feel like you're standing on that hillside as well as any historian I've read.Os.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It seems as Cahill continues on his "Hinges of History" series, his narratives become more and more disjointed. Nevertheless, I continue to stick with him, because he tries to portray the positive aspects of history, rather than all the downers. This book is beautifully illustrated with photos and spot color. My advice would be to try and take each chapter individually and try not to focus too hard on his thread of reasoning, which completely lost me. In the end, this book got me more interested in the MIddle Ages, gave me many other reading ideas (including Sigrid Undset's Nobel Prize winning book "Kristin Lavransdatter" which I had never before heard of.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thomas Cahill is simply my favorite writer on history. He does not simply recreate events, but rather recreates the attitudes that allow those events to transpire. We often ask when someone does the unthinkable, "What were they thinking?" Well, Cahill proposes to answer.He is the first that introduced to me in a way that I could grasp it that people who lived before me did not think the way I do. In fact, he has used the phrase "if they were capable of thinking that thought" to reveal that we are much more dependent on our culture and history than we would ever like to admit. Our free wills are seriously limited by our pre-suppositions and the ideas of those who surround us.In his "Hinges of History" series, he tries to plot those moments that new ideas arose and the events that allowed them to rise. What made this possible? What were they thinking.Of all his books in the series, this is my least favorite. Not that it is not a good book. The first 180 pages had me feeling like my soul was being stretched. But it seems to have lost focus at the end, devolving into mini-biographies of Giotto and Dante. Cahill's strength is his willingness to comment, to interject his reading of history openly, which many historians refuse to do, but do by implicit editing of story and choice of adjective.He redeems himself with a well-written final chapter, attempting to tie together a very ambitious project, probably the most ambitious to date. And perhaps that is the difficulty. The so-called "Dark Ages" were anything but, opening the human mind to a new schema, breaking the shackles that had been handed to them by their anscestors. The seminal figures' actions and thoughts began the trickle down process that resulted in much change in the attitudes of us moderns.That being said, we were led down the rabbit hole of a personal vendetta not revealed until the last chapter. He intends to add his voice to calls for a new reformation of the Catholic Church and edits history in such a way that it serves his purpose. While I may agree that such a reformation is needed, I felt it incidental more than pivotal to his story.Overall, well worth your time. Even the chapters I have criticized were well-written and eye-opening. I'll read it again before I die, if things go well. ;)