Thomas Cahill - Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2008

Copyright 2006 by Thomas Cahill
Excerpt from Heretics and Heroes copyright 2013 by Thomas Cahill.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.

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constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Nan A. Talese edition as follows:
Cahill, Thomas.
Mysteries of the Middle Ages : the rise of feminism, science, and art from the cults of Catholic Europe/Thomas Cahill.1st ed.
p. cm.(The hinges of history ; v. 5)
Includes index.
1. Civilization, Medieval. 2. WomenEuropeHistoryMiddle Ages, 500 1500. 3. Science, Medieval. 4. Art, Medieval. I. Title. II. Series: Cahill, Thomas. Hinges of history ; v. 5.
CB.351.C22 2006
909.07dc22 2006044545

eISBN: 978-0-307-75514-8

Book design by Terry Karydes (from the original series concept by Marysarah Quinn)
Map art by Virginia Norey
www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1_r1

Ceiling of Scrovegni Chapel, Padua Bridgeman Art Library

W e normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outragealmost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.

In this series, THE HINGES OF HISTORY , I mean to retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West. This is also the story of the evolution of Western sensibility, a narration of how we became the people we are and why we think and feel the way we do. And it is, finally, a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at stake, when the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries or frozen in death or evaporated altogether. But the great gift-givers, arriving in the moment of crisis, provided for transition, for transformation, and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.

Thomas Cahill

VOLUME I
HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION
THE UNTOLD STORY OF IRELANDS HEROIC ROLE FROM THE FALL OF ROME TO THE RISE OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE

This introductory volume presents the reader with a new way of looking at history. Its time periodthe end of the classical period and the beginning of the medieval periodenables us to look back to our ancient roots and forward to the making of the modern world.

VOLUME II
THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS
HOW A TRIBE OF DESERT NOMADS CHANGED THE WAY EVERYONE THINKS AND FEELS

This is the first of three volumes on the creation of the Western world in ancient times. It is first because its subject matter takes us back to the earliest blossoming of Western sensibility, there being no West before the Jews.

VOLUME III
DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS
THE WORLD BEFORE AND AFTER JESUS

This volume, which takes as its subject Jesus and the first Christians, comes directly after The Gifts of the Jews, because Christianity grows directly out of the unique culture of ancient Judaism.

VOLUME IV
SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA
WHY THE GREEKS MATTER

The Greek contribution to our Western heritage comes to us largely through the cultural conduit of the Romans (who, though they do not have a volume of their own, are a presence in Volumes I, III, IV, and V). The Greek contribution, older than Christianity, nevertheless continues past the time of Jesus and his early followers and brings us to the medieval period. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea concludes our study of the making of the ancient world.

VOLUME V
MYSTERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES
AND THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN WORLD

The high Middle Ages are the first iteration of the combined sources of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures that make Western civilization singular. In the fruitful interaction of these sources, science and realistic art are rediscovered and feminism makes its first appearance in human history.

VOLUMES VI AND VII

These volumes will continue and conclude our investigation of the making of the modern world and the impact of its cultural innovations on the sensibility of the West.

By Thomas Cahill

THE HINGES OF HISTORY

INTRODUCTORY VOLUME:
How the Irish Saved Civilization

THE MAKING OF THE ANCIENT WORLD:
The Gifts of the Jews
Desire of the Everlasting Hills
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD:
Mysteries of the Middle Ages

Two additional volumes are planned on the making of the modern world.

Also by Thomas Cahill

A Literary Guide to Ireland (with Susan Cahill)
Jesus Little Instruction Book
Pope John XXIII
A Saint on Death Row (forthcoming)

To Nan Ahearn Talese

e l mapparve, s com elli appare
subitamente cosa che disvia
per maraviglia tutto altro pensare,
una donna soletta che si ga
e cantando e scegliendo fior da fiore
ond era pinta tutta la sua via.

and there appeared to meas can befall
so suddenly a thing that drives away
all other thought by wonder magical
a lady alone who went along her way
singing and plucking flower upon flower,
which painted all the path that before her lay.

PRELUDE: ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF REASON
The Great Confluence

INTRODUCTION: ROME, CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD
How the Romans Became the Italians

ONE: BINGEN AND CHARTRES, GARDENS ENCLOSED
The Cult of the Virgin and Its Consequences

TWO: AQUITAINE AND ASSISI, COURTS OF LOVE
The Pursuit of Love and Its Consequences

INTERMEZZO: ENTRANCES TO OTHER WORLDS
The Mediterranean, the Orient, and the Atlantic

THREE: PARIS, UNIVERSITY OF HEAVENLY THINGS
The Exaltation of Reason and Its Consequences

FOUR: OXFORD, UNIVERSITY OF EARTHLY THINGS
The Alchemists Quest and Its Consequences

FIVE: PADUA, CHAPEL OF FLESH
The Artists Experiment and Its Consequences