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The History of the Medieval World is a simple yet strikingly apt title for historian Susan Wise Bauer’s quietly audacious tour de force. This comprehensive and colorful textbook spans the entire globe—from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Indian peninsula, Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica—during the period of civilizational upheaval that began with the fourth-century Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and ended with the founding of the Knights Templar in the 12th century.
Bauer writes accessibly, and her History of the Ancient World was recommended by LJ's reviewer "for all libraries needing a good primer".
From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T'ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled.
In her earlier work, The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer wrote of the rise of kingship based on might. But in the years between the fourth and the twelfth centuries, rulers had to find new justification for their power, and they turned to divine truth or grace to justify political and military action. Right thus replaces might as the engine of empire.
Not just Christianity and Islam but the religions of the Persians and the Germans, and even Buddhism, are pressed into the service of the state. This phenomenon--stretching from the Americas all the way to Japan--changes religion, but it also changes the state.
A masterful narrative of the Middle Ages, when religion became a weapon for kings all over the world.
