Durant Will - The Age of Faith : the Story of Civilization, Volume IV

WILL DURANT was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, on November 5, 1885. He was educated in the Catholic parochial schools there and in Kearny, New Jersey, and thereafter in St. Peters (Jesuit) College, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Columbia University. New York. For a summer he served as a cub reporter on the New York Journal, in 1907, but finding the work too strenuous for his temperament;, he settled down at Seton Hall College, South Orange, New Jersey, to teach Latin, French, English, and geometry(190711). He entered the seminary at Seton Hall in 1909, but withdrew in 1911 for reasons he has described in his book Transition. He passed from this quiet seminary to the most radical circles in New York, and became (191113) the teacher of the Ferrer Modern School, an experiment in libertarian education. In 1912 he toured Europe at the invitation and expense of Alden Freeman, who had befriended him and now undertook to broaden his borders.

Returning to the Ferrer School, he fell in love with one of his pupilswho had been born Ida Kaufman in Russia on May 10, 1898resigned his position, and married her(1913). For four years he took graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in biology under Morgan and Calkins and in philosophy under Wood-bridge and Dewey. He received the doctorate in philosophy in 1917, and taught philosophy at Columbia University for one year. In 1914, in a Presbyterian church in New York, he began those lectures on history, literature, and philosophy that, continuing twice weekly for thirteen years, provided the initial material for his later works.

The unexpected success of The Story of Philosophy (1926) enabled him to retire from teaching in 1927. Thenceforth, except for some incidental essays Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave nearly all their working hours (eight to fourteen daily) to The Story of Civilization. To better prepare themselves they toured Europe in 1927, went around the world in 1930 to study Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and Japan, and toured the globe again in 1932 to visit Japan, Manchuria, Siberia, Russia, and Poland. These travels provided the background for Our Oriental Heritage (1935) as the first volume in The Story of Civilization. Several further visits to Europe prepared for Volume 2, The Life of Greece (1939), and Volume 3, Caesar and Christ (1944). In 1948, six months in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Europe provided perspective for Volume 4, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951 Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of gleanings for Volume 5, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new vistas for Volume 6, The Reformation (1957).

Mrs. Durants share in the preparation of these volumes became more and more substantial with each year, until in the case of Volume 7, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so it was on The Age of Louis XIV (1963), The Age of Voltaire (1965), and Rousseau and Revolution (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1968).

The publication of Volume II, The Age of Napoleon, in 1975 concluded five decades of achievement. Ariel Durant died on October 25, 1981, at the age of 83; Will Durant died 13 days later, on November 7, aged 96. Their last published work was A Dual Autobiography (1977).

to editions referred to in the Notes

Books starred are recommended for further study.

ABBOTT, G. F., Israel in Egypt, London, 1907.

ABBOTT, NABIA, Two Queens of Baghdad, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1946.

*ABLAKD, P., Historia Calamitatum, St. Paul, Minn., 1922.
Ouvrages indits, ed. V. Cousin, Paris, 1836.

ABRAHAMS, I., Chapters on Jewish Literature, Phila., 1899.
Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, Phila., 1896.

ABU BEKR IBN TUFAIL, The History of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, tr. Ockley, N. Y., n.d.

ACKERMAN, PHYLLIS, Tapestry, the Mirror of Civilization, Oxford Univ. Press, 1933.

ADAMS, B., Law of Civilization and Decay, N. Y., 1921.

*ADAMS, H., Mont St. Michel and Chartres, Boston, 1926.

ADDISON, J. D., Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages, Boston, 1908.

ALI, MAULANA MUHAMMAD, The Religion of Islam, Lahore, 1936.

ALI TABARI, The Book of Religion and Empire, N. Y., 1922.

AMEER ALI, SYED, The Spirit of Islam, Calcutta, 1900.

AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, Works, Loeb Lib., 1935. 2v.

ANDRAE, TOR, Mohammed, tr. Menzel, N. Y., 1936.

ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, tr. Ingram, Everyman Lib.

ANGLO-SAXON POETRY, ed. R. K. Gordon, Everyman Lib.

ARCHER, T. A., and KINGSFORD, C L., The Crusades, N. Y., 1895.

*ARISTOTLE, Politics, tr. Ellis, Everyman Lib.

ARMSTRONG, SIR WALTER, Art in Great Britain and Ireland, London, 1919.

ARNOLD, M., Essays in Criticism, First Series, N. Y., n.d. Home Lib.

ARNOLD, SIR T. W., Painting in Islam, Oxford, 1928.
The Preaching of Islam, N. Y., 1913.
and GUILLAUME, A., The Legacy of Islam, Oxford, 1931.

ASHLEY, W. J., Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, N.Y., 1894f. 2v.

ASIN Y PALACIOS, M., Islam and the Divine Comedy, London, 1926.

ASSER OF ST. DAVIDS, Annals of the Reign of Alfred the Great, in Giles, J. A.

*AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE, tr. Mason, Everyman Lib.

AUGUSTINE, ST., The City of God, tr. Healey, London, 1934.
* Confessions, Loeb Lib. 2v.
Letters, Loeb Lib.

AUSONIUS, Poems, Loeb Lib. 2v.

AVERROS, A Decisive Discourse on the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy, and An Exposition of the Methods of Argument Concerning the Doctrines of the Faith, Baroda, n.d.

AVICENNA, Canon Medicinae, Venice, 1608.

BACON, ROGER, Opus majus, tr. Burke, Univ. of Penn. Press, 1928. 2v.

BADER, G., Jewish Spiritual Heroes, N. Y., 1940. 3v.

BAEDEKER, K., Northern Italy, London, 1913.

AL-BALADHURI, ABU-L ABBAS AHMAD, Origins of the Islamic State; tr. Hitti, Columbia Univ. Press, 1916.

BARNES, H. E., Economic History of the Western World, N. Y., 1942.
History of Western Civilization, N. Y., 1935. 2v.

BARON, S. W., Social and Religious History of the Jews. Columbia Univ. Press, 1937. 3v.
ed., Essays on Maimonides, Columbia Univ. Press, 1941.

BEARD, MIRIAM, History of the Business Man, N. Y., 1938.

BEBEL, A., Woman under Socialism, N. Y., 1923.

BECKER, C. H., Christianity and Islam, London, 1909.

BEDE, VEN., Ecclesiastical History of England, ed. King, Loeb Lib.

BEER, M., Social Struggles in the Middle Ages, London, 1924.

BELLOC, H., Paris, N. Y., 1907.

BENJAMIN OF TUDELA, Travels; cf. Komroff, M., Contemporaries of Marco Polo.

BEVAN, E. R., and SINGER, C., The Legacy of Israel, Oxford, 1927.

BIEBER, M., History of the Greek and Roman Theater, Princeton Univ. Press, 1939.

AL-BIRUNI, Chronology of Ancient Nations, tr. Sachau, London, 1879.
India, London, 1910. 2v.

BLOK, P. J., History of the People of the Netherlands, N. Y., 1898. 3v.

BOER, T. J. DE, History of Philosophy in Islam, London, 1903.

*BOETHIUS, Consolation of Philosophy, Loeb Lib.

BOISSIER, G., La fin du paganisme, Paris, 1913. 2v.

BOISSONNADE, P., Life and Work in Medieval Europe, N. Y., 1927.

BONAVENTURE, ST., Life of St. Francis, in Little Flowers of St. Francis, Everyman Lib.

BOND, FR., Gothic Architecture in England, London, 1906.
Wood Carving in English Churches, London, 1910. 2v.

BOUCHIER, E. S., Life and Letters in Roman Africa, Oxford, 1913.

BREHAUT, E., An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages, N. Y., 1912.

BRIDGES, J. H., Life and Work of Roger Bacon, London, 1914.