A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age

My daughter brought this book to my attention about 10 years ago. "WHAT?!? You haven't read this?!? Here!" with a forceful thrust, causing the book to thump into my chest rather painfully. (The bruises have since healed.)

Since that copy, I have given to others eleven more; I seem to be able to keep the book for about six months before someone just *has* to read it and *now*, so out it goes again. Weeks go by, and I fretfully search the used bookeries for another copy; always one shows up, usually in very good to unread condition (philistines! Imagine having this book and not reading it!), and spend the buck or so to bring it home *for the last time* as I will keep *this* one forever.

Uh-huh. As we see, that resolve is doomed. I'm show more sending this one to that soldier who wanted history books. He'll like this one, I bet!

It's a leap of imagination that I feel 21st-century people have small success at making, but the time when the world was lit only by fire didn't end until late in the 19th century. No flipping switches for instant light. No reading lamp that just needs a little flick to provide bright, shadowless (unless you sited it in a funny place) light for as long as you like. No street illumination worth a damn.

A world of shadows. A world of unseen details. A world that gave us fabulous artistic achievements, amazing literary joys, and most of our modern ideas about religion, which I for one could do without.

Manchester makes this world shimmer into focus, bronze-gold candleflame coloring each and every idea, achievement, material object he describes. We really see what he's talking about through their eyes, if we possess even a hint of imagination.

I love this book, and I think everyone in the least bit interested in history should read it because it's beautifully written and conceived. It's a pleasure to pass it on to another initiate. I hope he falls in love the way I did. Please try it. It's worth your time to sink without a ripple into a world long vanished. show less

What a deeply disappointing book. It is rare to read a work in which the author so clearly shows his disdain for the subject and takes so little care to first understand. There are multiple errors of fact. In almost every instance, the most uncharitable interpretation is presented as the only choice. The organization is appalling. It seems to be more of a polemic for humanism. Manchester chooses a few heroes whom he portrays as irreligious or at least outside the bounds of an established church. Those whom he chooses are presented as heroes, and their flaws are minimized and explained away. Everyone else is evil or stupid or both. It is difficult to have any confidence in any part of this work in light of the obvious and overwhelming flaws.

Ah, Medieval Man! Let’s see what he’s up to (at least according to William Manchester’s account of him in A World Lit Only by Fire).

He rises in the morning, along with a posse of his inbred relations, from his lice-ridden communal bed. He’s too poor and stupid to have a blanket, of course. He wipes away sufficient grime from his eyes to open them, and looks out upon the same dreary vista that has assaulted his eyes on each and every day of his life so far – and the one he’ll witness every day hereafter, because we know that no medieval man, bar a few dissolute nobles, ever goes anywhere.

At some point, our antihero must muck about on the farm a bit (although Manchester doesn’t get his authorly hands dirty with details of show more this), and he's got to set aside an hour or two (although he has no concept of time, of course) to rut with a goodly selection of the local maidens, matrons and nuns, but mostly he screws up his meager powers of mind to focus really, really hard on believing -- in the most literal and unquestioning detail -- every last iota of the indoctrination he's received from the evil hypocritical irrational venomous gluttonous venial lecherous clergy down at the local cathedral. (By the way: how did that glorious cathedral, that monument to the soaring of man’s spirit to seek to meet the Eternal, that landmark that still stands and draws simpletons in their thousands and millions – how did it get there, when it could only have been constructed by the hairless apes of the Dark Ages? You’ve got me, and you’ve certainly got Manchester, because he’s fresh out of explanations. Must have been dropped in by aliens.)

Look, I could go on with this – but there’s no point. This is a terrible, ridiculous book; it’s the first example I will heretofore cite of what C S Lewis termed ‘chronological snobbery’, i.e. the total inability to accept that people of an earlier time might have had thoughts and values and mores of their own that are different from, and not necessarily inferior to, our own.

Manchester is a vivid and skilled writer, but he lacks entirely the imagination and empathy needed to understand his subject in this book, and he's clearly obsessed with his own status as a 'rational' 'humanistic' intellectual 'hero' in the mold of Erasmus.

Not only not recommended: please avoid this book entirely. show less

It’s fun sometimes to see a noted historian pushed out of his comfort zone – and sometimes it’s not.

William Manchester was a famous writer about the 20th century having given us books about Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill and a fascinating (though flawed) retelling of the death of President Kennedy.

So when a friend asked him for a preface for a book about Magellan, Manchester suddenly decided to immerse himself in “the Calamitious 14th century” – Martin Luther and Pope Leo and the Borgias and all the rest.

The result was [A World Lit Only By Fire] and while it’s readable and fun, it ain't very good history. In a lot of places it’s lazy and in other places just plain wrong.

Manchester has a lot to say about the show more times and the people and his skill as a writer has not deserted him.

He has a lot of fun sticking up for the famous poisoner Lucretia Borgia seeing her as a nice Italian girl who liked sex and didn’t like being told what to do by her brothers. (He retells the wonderful story of how Lucretia, then eight months pregnant, was solemnly pronounced "Virgo Intacto" by the College of Cardinals so she could legally remarry)

He loves to tell the stories about Luther’s scatological obsessions and all of this is more or less in the writings. But he loses his way trying to find a theme to the work, and he commits a few real howlers due to careless reading or liking a good story more than the truthful one.

Good writing but bad scholarship . . . a pity

And don't get me started on the Pied Piper of Hamlin show less

Rarely has so bad a book been written by a professional historian. We are not talking about run of the mill bad. We are talking about outright horrendous and unredeemable. Someone refers to it in another review as "full of half-truths" and I ask, "Where?" Little in here rises to the level of a half-truth.

Manchester's failure to footnote helps hide just how bad it is, since it puts a barrier between the reader and a check of his mangling of sources. This book collects a variety of out-of-date mythologies about late medieval life and gleans from them the most salacious details, never taking any juicy rumor with a grain of salt or checking its source. If it's a juicy rumor, it must be true - history as written by a malicious village show more gossip.

Let me add some examples of particularly attrocious errors (ignoring the salacious here and just focusing on places where he briefly ventures into an actual bit of historical analysis): Manchester refers to medieval Popes as "infalliable". The doctrine of infalliability was formally adopted by the Chruch in the 19th century and projecting the ultimate formal "resolution" of a long-standing debate a thousand years in history as a "done deal" is a good way to show he doesn't understand the debates over Papal power versus that of the Council and Patriarch. Likewise, Manchester talks about the lack of medieval journeys to foreign lands, demonstrating a failure to understand any of the medieval migrations, the Viking explorations and conquests, the many pilgrimages, the crusades, even the seasonal migrations of pastoralists ... and all the other journeys that made medieval society a society and that bound together these cultures he looks to deal with in broad generalities. Indeed, part of what makes the medieval era distinct is the periodic displacement of the population. Many other examples are explored in other reviews, there's no point to cataloging them here. I note that in the Amazon reviews, one person undertook to catalogue errors on the first page, and goes on for some time. And I am not at all sure the task was completed.

If you want salacious details, read pornography instead. It will be more honest. And possibly more scholarly. show less

Manchester's excellent work endeavors to make a modern reader understand the medieval person, the world they lived in, their psychology, their daily life, their fears and concerns. He expertly details the differences between our modern world and theirs by doing a case study of a couple of specific periods, then moving the work into the Italian Renaissance to show the reader how incredibly shocking everything that happened in the 'exploration age' was.

He devotes the last third of his book to his fascination with Ferdinand Magellan, which wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was still insightful, interesting, and educational. You could do fine not reading that section if you wanted a shorter read more specific to the medieval period, show more since the sheer length and detail of his Magellan section makes the rest of the book feel oddly like his long, detailed prologue intended to set the stage for how interesting he finds this one historical character.... who is not a likable character at all. I'm sorry, Manchester, I'm just not into conquistadors. show less

Interesting but disappointing. Although, the Medieval Mind is an excellent portend for the 1632 series. Great quote from the Magellan section; "His character was, of course, imperfect. But heroes need not be admirable, and indeed most have not been. The web of driving traits behind their accomplishments almost assures that. Men who do the remarkable — heroic and otherwise — frequently fail in their personal relationships. This unpleasant reality is usually glossed over in burnishing the image of the great.” Compliments of bread2u.