Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages [Paperback]

Norman F. Cantor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 1995

A fascinating look at life in the Middle Ages that focuses on eight extraordinary medieval men and women through realistically invented conversations between them and their counterparts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cantor ( Inventing the Middle Ages ), a professor of history, sociology and comparative literature at New York University, here presents lively and engaging portraits of five men and three women whose idealism exerted great influence during the medieval era, beginning with Helena Augusta (c.255-329), the mother of Constantine the Great, and ending with John Duke of Bedford (c.1389-1435), who was regent of France for Henry VI. Cantor creates vignettes in which his subjects engage in discourse with their contemporaries. He imagines Helena Augusta, for instance, stopping at an inn along the Palestinian coast and discussing theological matters with the innkeeper, his assistant and a Roman Catholic bishop. This approach reveals not only the subjects' characters, but also the religious and political ideas that informed their lives, as well as other significant aspects of medieval society and culture. Although the author uses fictionalized conversations, his reconstructions rest on solid research and result in compelling depictions of important medieval thinkers, including Hildegard of Bingen, Alcuin of York and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Through "conversations" among major and minor historical figures, Cantor ( Inventing the Middle Ages , LJ 12/91) explores some of the main themes of Western medieval civilization: education and the preservation of classical culture, church-state relations, the nature and purpose of history, mysticism, the princely court, and the growth of royal centralized government. The conversations display considerable learning, a vivid style, and sometimes a rare sensitivity. Although Cantor violates the cardinal historical rule that all generalization must be based on evidence, the crux of the conversational arguments remain highly plausible. To make his material palatable to modern readers, however, he introduces seriously misleading anachronisms, such as the support of the Emperor Constantine's mother for the ordination of women, for which there is no supporting evidence. Highly provocative but to be used with great caution.
- Bennett D. Hill, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (February 3, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060925795
• ISBN-13: 978-0060925796
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #418,666 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A terrible disservice to the dead and the living, September 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages (Paperback)

This book seriously misrepresents the medieval period, its concerns, its possibilities. Not only that, it's factually awful....for instance, Cantor couldn't be bothered to find out that Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204, not 1194 as he writes. The book is a waste of money and even raises ethical concerns, coming as it does from a "professional historian." As history, it's garbage, as historical fiction, it is dull.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Skimpy on the History, with Dreadful Diologue, April 20, 2001

By 

Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages (Paperback)

Medieval history is a fascinating subject in the right hands. The "eight charismatic men and women of the middle ages" that Professor Cantor includes in these vignettes are all worthy of study. They were movers and shakers in their eras, and are good representatives of their times. Cantor begins in the 4th century with a chapter on the Emperor Constantine's mother, Helena Augusta. Two other medieval women, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hildegarde of Bingen, figure in later chapters. The book is divided into nine chapters, taking us from the 4th to the 15th centuries.

The last chapter features a kind of round-table discussion at a French castle (this is after Henry V has defeated the French at Agincourt) between John, Duke of Bedford (Henry V's brother), Cardinal Beaufort, Sir Edmund Smythe ("Duke John's civil and legal administrator in France), Thomas Blount, Abraham de Mendoza (A Spanish Jewish convert to the Christian faith and a rpominent papal banker), Christine de Pisan (Parisian poet, critic and book publisher), Brother William Marsh (Duke John's confessor), "Irishman" Dennis Hennessey and Mathilde of Hainault ("abbess of St. Mary of Rouen"). This chapter also sums up what is weakest and even amateurish about this book. Instead of engaging in any sort of free-flowing, naturally occuring diologue, these figures are mereley thrown together by the author to spout staged-sounding, wooden exposition. As literary characters, they are totally artificial, contrived mouthpieces whose sole function is to relate historical information the author wants to get across. Often, the information Professor Cantor conveys is misinformation anyway, as evidenced by the following passage, in which Christine de Pisan describes the current conditions in Venice: "I do not know from personal experience what they think in the Adriatic now, but if I know the Venetians, they will not let the Florentines get ahead of them, and will give their own twist to the idea of the Renaissance. Being closer to the Byzantine Empire, they will, I expect, stress Greek as well as Latin antiquity, and in view of the parlous condition of Constantinople, hard pressed continually by the Turks, I would surmise that the Venetians would pursuade Greek scholars to relocate from Byzantium and set up schools in Venice. But as to the issue so heatedly debated here, I agree with Mendoza that a new cultural era has dawned. For better or worse, I think the Middle Ages are waning."

What is wrong with this picture? Aside from the fact that the diologue is clumsily constructed and completely artificial, the fact that a professor of "history, sociology and comparative literature" at NYU would have one of his characters say, in the middle of the 15th century that "the Middle Ages are waning" is sad indeed. The most common, rudimentary logic would dictate that a person living in what we term "the Middle Ages" wouldn't consider them the "Middle Ages." They would consider themselves to be living in the "Modern Age," if anything. But in fact they didn't tend to think in terms anywhere near these in the first place. The same is to a lesser degree true of the term "Renaissance." That capitalized expression didn't have any currency until Walter Pater's 19th century essays on Italian Art. These are just among the most glaring of the myriad inaccuracies strewn across the pages of Medieval Lives. There is so much good literature on medieval history out there that one could turn to practically any work and come up with something superior to this . One can't go wrong turning to the primary texts either. Read Froissart, St. Augustine, Procopius, Joineville, or the Venerable Bede. Pass this one by.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Modern Lives, April 21, 2004

By 

James K. Hoffman "Book Addict" (Jersey Village, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages (Paperback)

Medieval Lives was a complete dissapointment.

In the words of the author, "I cannot recreate you, medieval people, because I could not define how your personalitiesand desires linked with concrete times and places. You were stick figures, totems on a landscape, lines upon the horizon, temporally and spatially floating away."
I couldn't say it better myself. The author could not, in fact, recreate anything like the lives of the people featured in the book. He drew, at best, very modern people who spouted codified, modernized rhetoric based, very loosely, on philosophy that took its root in the Middle Ages. Virtually no attempt was made to make any of these people sound like people from the Middle Ages. Most of the time, it seemed as though the characters were simply talking heads that served no purpose other than espoousing the author's personal agenda. They spoke in a kind of sociological dissertation language that would not have been found in any setting outside of modern universities.
Save your money!