Customer Reviews

The Middle Ages, Volume I, Sources of Medieval History

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This is a fairly standard collection, and better than some I've seen. Nonetheless, one should be aware of the following:
* The entire Norse and Icelandic literature is omitted.
* Anglo-Saxon poetry also omitted.
* Welsh and Gaelic literature is MIA.
* As with narrative textbooks on the Middle Ages in Europe, it basically omits Iberia and anything east of Venice (with a few exceptions from Constantinople). In other words, it omits most of the territory and most of the population of Europe in that period.
* It follows the current Very Annoying custom of these readings collections: citing where the translations come from, but not the actual source document itself. At times one cannot know, from this text, who wrote what one is reading. I tell you truly, it is moronic to tell me who translated something, while not telling me what they translated it from. Moronic, despicable, and it teaches the students exactly the wrong thing about scholarship and citation.

Brian Tierney has collected so many excellent primary sources. If you are interested in what people of that time thought about or wrote, by all means get anything by Tierney. If you are a history student or teacher, these gems will enliven the discussion in the classroom and will even challenge your ideas of modernity. Enjoy!

The book was in great condition, it was a older version then we used in class, but it stil works. It also arrived a little later then I was hoping for.