Readings in Medieval History, Third Edition

Read it and weep at how far the West has deteriorated since Medieval times.

The book is intended to give the reader an idea of how people thought in Medieval times, which it does. It is also a sad commentary on how much of its values and backbone the West has lost since then.

Readings in Medieval History is a terrific book for a number of reasons. Many students today encounter only secondary source materials in their history courses; in other words, students are immediately presented with a particular historian's opinion of a given source document before he or she is allowed to dive into the readings themselves. Secondary text books frame (and limit) one's readings with phrases such as "the Anglo-Saxon chronicle was significant because..." Patrick Geary presents the material in their raw form and allows the reader to draw his or her own significance. This text allows the student of history to read primary documents, which are mostly presented unabridged, exactly as they were written by their medieval authors. Other than the inherent problems of translation (most of these texts were writen in medieval Latin, Old English, French, or other vernaculars) this book offers the most direct contact with the past that an individual can reasonably hope for. This book allows you to hear the medieval voice without modern contextual hindrances. Readings in Medieval History situates its wonderful texts in their own particular cultural milieu, and allows the reader to appreciate these documents in their own right.

I had the opportunity to use this book as a text for a course while studying at UC Riverside. It serves well as a secondary souce; for those unfamiliar with the term, this kind of source is historical documentation written by contemporaries. So it contains accounts written written by medieval Europeans. It does primarily contain translated documents, in modern english, from Western Europe. Readers will find all the usual suspects and many more: Tacitus, Charlemagne, Gregory of Tours, King Louis the Ninth, King John, and a plethora of papal thought. Additional gems include the memoirs of a Byzantine princess, the Domesday book, the Concordant of Worms, and the interpretations of Aristotle by the Muslim philosopher Siegbert (my favorite). Naturally, the writings are challenging to read for those who are unfamiliar with medieval prose and style, but as a student I found reading the documents remarkably similar to reading today's Common Law documents. For anyone who is interested in building synapses geared for the study of law, this thick book is a springboard as most of its documents pertain to canon law, divine law, theology, Roman law, and English law. Worth your pennies!