Most Americans, and no doubt many in Britain, immediately fasten on the label Dark Ages when the Middle Ages come to mind. The term has fallen out of favor with many historians, who have delved into the history of the period from roughly 500 to 1500 and discovered signs of change that don’t comport with the pejorative label. But I’ve never come across an author who goes to such lengths to prove the case as does historian Ian Mortimer in his new Middle Ages revisionist history, Medieval Horizons. The book is a journey through 500 years of English history, examining in glorious detail the extraordinary changes that revolutionized the lives of everyone in the kingdom during the period 1000 to 1500.
Earth-shaking changes in the lives of the English
Admittedly, 500 years is only one half of the period normally considered the Middle Ages. Others have covered the whole period and found reason to reject the label Dark Ages. But Mortimer narrows his focus so as to dramatize the top-to-bottom changes in the lives and minds of the English people, especially the peasants. During his period of study, English peasants in 1000, Mortimer argues, suffered from grinding poverty, their lives punctuated by all-too-frequent famine, abject passivity toward those on the higher rungs of society, and a powerful sense they were submerged in the collective identity of “village” or “peasant” without any sense of themselves as individuals.
By 1500 all that had changed. Nearly everyone in English society possessed a strong sense of agency. Most peasants, townfolk, gentry, and nobility alike looked to their station in life as God-given, but there were escape routes for some, and social mobility began to appear. For example, peasants unhappy with their work on the land might make their way to a nearby town. After a year, they became freemen, employed in one of the many crafts and working their way up in the hierarchy of a guild. These were earth-shaking changes, and they prefigured the belief we share in individual liberty, which was not long in coming by 1500. In the deepest sense, then, this book is truly a Middle Ages revisionist history.
Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Ian Mortimer (2024) 249 pages★★★★★
So, how did all this happen?
Mortimer locates the sources of this sea change in English society principally in three areas. In the tumultuous history of the Church, with its authority unchallenged in 1000 to the gradual buildup of the Protestant Reformation in the work of Luther’s forebears. In the introduction of new technology in fighting wars, which undermined the supremacy of the knights and elevated that of the bowmen and pikemen, and in the introduction of time-saving new devices for farming, such as the heavy plow. And in the Black Death, which reduced the English population by 40 percent, creating opportunities for peasants to demand wages for their labor from landlords desperate for workers to till their land. He makes a very convincing case.
About the author
Ian Mortimer has written twenty-two previous nonfiction books of history, nearly all focusing on the English history, as well as four historical novels. He has been self-employed as a writer since 2001. Mortimer holds BA, PhD, and DLitt degrees from the University of Exeter and an MA from University College London. Most of those degrees are in history. He was born in 1967.
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This is definitely one of the Good books about the Middle Ages.
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