Jeb Smith

As one who has himself come to the conclusion that what I grew up calling "the Dark Ages" were in many ways no darker than our own, I was eager to read an intelligent analysis that might further enhance my understanding of the era. And I don't think anyone can accuse Jeb Smith of not doing his research. Very few self-published books, and increasingly few books from major publishing houses, come with an extensive list of references these days. Unfortunately, Smith's reading of history is not show more balanced. In his eagerness to correct the record, he credulously accepts the medieval accounts that support his own views, which are heavily grounded in a particular religious and moral framework, and discounts the testimony that contradict them. This framework includes the acceptance of the institutional Christianity of this period as being the best and only expression of the Christian ideal at that time, and the author's apparent opinion that the excesses and cruelties perpetrated by institutional Christianity were justified by the threats posed by its opponents.

Let's look at torture. To his credit, Smith confronts the issue head on. Smith tells us that "torture was only used when a guilty verdict seemed inevitable, but the guilty refused to confess." (The torturers of Abu Ghraib would likely have said the same.) He tells us in italics, so that we cannot skip over his message, that Inquisitors "were the heretics' friend, not their enemy as commonly believed." If defendants were found guilty, "the inquisitors would try to show the heretic why they are wrong and why their soul is in danger and try to bring them back...the Inquisitors were not like the typical portrayal of angry, bloodthirsty lunatics enjoying torture. In fact, they were often educated and morally upright men who were seeking the truth....alhough the image of dark dungeons and secret trials, torture and murders is commonly shared, everything was actually written down and recorded." What is as concerning as what seems to be a tacit endorsement of torture is the author's seeming belief that these statements could change anyone's mind about its evil. If a man has me bound and is pulling at my flesh with red-hot pincers, it does not matter to me whether he is educated, whether he is sincere in his belief that I am wrong, whether he enjoys or hates using the pincers, and certainly not whether he thinks of himself as my friend. Smith's portrayal of inquisitional methods as understandable, even kind, does nothing to correct the record, much less the incompatibility of torture with Christian love, however conceived.

This is only one example subject among many subjects, such as the nature of Islam and the position of women, which are covered in the book. Smith's views on these subjects go beyond correcting the accepted historical record of the Middle Ages, as he sometimes leaves his subject for outbursts whose subject is the modern world. "Do you want people to hear your voice [as a woman]? Start with your children, raising them to hear and obey you. The loving voice of a mother is better received than holding a sign screaming at strangers in the street. Do you want to be counter-cultural? Stay married for life, be an example of unconditional love to your kids and husband, and most of all, homeschool your kids, it's the most counter-cultural decision you can make, and the results will show it." He continues in a section titled "Modern Feminism: The Hatred of All Things Feminine," so close to his heart that he uses it to end his book.

Smith can't defend the Middle Ages, it seems, without attacking the modern age. But his attacks obscure, not reinforce, the defense, and in most readers' minds at least, seem likely to invalidate it. show less

I found Defending Dixie's Land very interesting and not quite what I expected. I expected something alone the lines of a straight Southern Apologetics, but it was more than that. There was a great deal of life in the Antebellum South was not was how it is so often now portrayed which was to be expected. The victors do get to control the narrative after all. There are a tremendous number of primary references quoted, sometimes to the point it was almost a stringing together of the various show more quotations. Ultimately what I got our of the book was the the American Civil War, or the Recent Unpleasantness, was a major turning point in the philosophy of how the Federal Government is run - an argument that dates back to Jefferson's and Hamilton's differing visions for whether the Federal Government should be limited and power left to the local and state governments or central, strong, and powerful. Particularly interesting were the arguments of how this centralization has impacted family life, education, religious life, and civic life and how those changes play out today. The book was written in a conversational tone and is accessible to anyone wanting to do some more scholarly reading without that reading being too esoteric. Again I was impressed with the citing of original sources as well as secondary sources. I would have like to have seen a compilation at the end of all the references quoted through out the book (the author does explain why there isn't), but they are well cited throughout the text and easy to note. Would recommend to Southerners who are tired of being looked down on, those interested in major crossroads in history, particularly U.S. history, and those wanting to look a issues that may not be as black and white as assumed (no pun intended). show less

Jeb Smith’s Defending the Middle Ages offers a provocative reexamination of a period often dismissed as backward or brutal. While readers may not agree with all of Smith’s conclusions—especially his unapologetic defense of the Crusades, Inquisitions, and medieval religious structures—the book challenges modern assumptions with historical nuance and primary sources that deserve thoughtful consideration. Approaching it with an open mind allows for a deeper understanding of how show more narratives are shaped, and how the complexities of medieval life—from the roles of women to the motivations behind knightly orders—can be more layered than popular history suggests show less

Smith, Jed Defending the Middle Ages: Little Known Truths about the Crusades, Inquisitions, Medieval Women, and More. Independently Published, 2025.
Modern era scholars and therefore the vast majority of modern readers in the general public have been lying and then lied to for 500 years. The lies began with the Renaissance and became deeply embedded during the Enlightenment. Jed Smith, following the trail blazed by a few revisionist scholars such as Prof. Bernard Bachrach, Prof. Jonathan show more Riley-Smith, and Dr. Andrew Holt is leading us toward a complete reevaluation of the supposed “Dark Ages,” and in Smith’s work in particular, The Early and High Medieval. This re-examination is long overdue.
Smith, though not a scholarly historian, does an excellent job in 221 pages of taking his readers back to the original sources. At times in this process the sheer number of quoted passages from medieval documents is almost overwhelming leaving one longing for more narrative context and deeper analysis, the result is both informative and enlightening.
The Middle Ages are far more complex than a simple story of greedy Kings and Lords exploiting peasants and using religion as an excuse for crusading conquest. Smith begins his exploration of the period with what in an age of European, to include the English-speaking lands outside of Europe, Oikophobia and post-colonial self-flagellation, is perhaps the most contentious of the topics generally, the Crusades. Smith directly challenges the modern perception of the Crusades as a prototype of later European Imperialism, providing extensive documentation that it was not land-hungry second and third sons that formed the core of the Crusading forces. It was devout fathers and first sons inspired by their Christian faith and fired by the Muslim conquest of and totalitarian governance of the Holy Land, encroachments on the Byzantine Empire, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula that organized, led, fought, and died in the Crusades.
Smith then tackles the Protestant critique of the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisitions demonstrating with documents and statistics the rationale for, the rather limited use of torture, and the rarity of executions resulting from the Inquisition, though the cumulative number seems high. The very idea of a religious inquisition seems foreign and horrific to modern tolerant sensibilities yet set against the communally-based society of the Medieval period, built upon an ideology centered on Roman Catholic orthodoxy, the sane and reasonable motivations of the Inquisition become far more reasonable and understandable even if one disagrees with those sociological and ideological underpinnings.
When seen in comparison to Karl Popper and Herbert Marcus’ “tolerant intolerance” and the zero-sum game of woke ideology, Smith leads us to question whether the Medieval was in reality less tolerant than our own deeply conflicted age. When spread over the nearly 500 years of activity by the various regional Inquisitions the light hand of the Inquisitors becomes apparent. Were there occasional missteps and excesses, absolutely but then when in human history have there not been missteps and excesses?
We often see women as mere chattel in the medieval, yet Smith effectively again relying on primary source documents, challenges this view as well. He documents through the use of the voices of both men and women in the medieval the high regard women were held in as well as demonstrating their central role in the politics and economics of the period.
The critical theme that Smith highlights throughout the work was the shift that occurred in the 13th and 14th century as the Roman Catholic Church adopted evolving classical Roman Law as the basis for emerging Canon Law and Canon courts. This transformation within the Roman Catholic Church infiltrated the medieval system of customary law in the secular realm, fundamentally undermining the social and political order of the early and high medieval periods. The common understanding of the medieval or feudal order is that royalty and nobility were unconstrained in their oppression and suppression of the peasantry. The reality was much different. The early and high medieval periods social order was built on what began as tribal law then became customary law, we know it today is English common law. This customary law was changing and premised on a set of interlocking rights, responsibilities, privileges, and duties. Every peasant knew what their rights, responsibilities, privileges, and duties were as did every nobleman, churchman, and king.
Contrast that with the world in which we unknowingly commit three felonies a day and the law changes, often time unannounced, based upon legislative and regulatory whim, a world in which we have no idea what the law actually is, nor do we understand our rights, responsibilities, privileges, and duties. It was the adoption of the principles of Roman law, constantly evolving, developing, and changing that altered the order of life between the high medieval in the late medieval and led to the crisis of the 16th Century when the medieval world unraveled, the consensus that had united it fragmented, and the modern world emerged.
Smith is aggressive in his defense of the early and high medieval, given the unraveling, fragmentation, and social disorder of our own collapsing modern liberal social order, perhaps justifiably so. Written without the dense opacity of much of modern academic writing, Smith’s work is approachable for the general reader and useful for the scholar, especially one looking for new ways to look at this seemingly well plowed field.
One of the major strengths of Smith’s work is his highlighting of the transition between customary law and Roman law. Another is his extensive use of the periods’ primary source documents. Much though this reviewer likes and recommends Smith’s work, it is not without some shortcomings. As noted earlier there are some shortcomings. Chief among them is that weaving in more contextual narrative and analysis amidst the chains of many and sometimes quite long excerpts from the primary sources would have made the work, perhaps, more approachable and engaging. Another weakness is that Smith in his rejection of the commonly held, among both scholars and the public, view of the medieval is that rather than employing a scalpel narrowly on any one of the multiple topics he tackles, he employs a two-handed broadsword on the entire edifice., Quite often reviewer critiques a book based on the book they wish were written rather the one that was written, with that in mind, though this reviewer wishes the book were more tightly focused on a particular topic with medieval world, especially that idea of customary law versus Roman law, Smith’s work is a valuable contribution toward the work of revising and deepening our knowledge of the Middle Ages. show less