A World Lit Only by Fire, The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, Portrait of an Age
by William Manchester, 1992, Little, Brown & Company, Limited, Boston
This is an amazing book, although somewhat loosely structured. Manchester admits this structure issue himself as he describes in the forward of the book that it seemed to him that the book wrote itself rather than his writing it or that it was written “inside out”. His primary thesis is that Ferdinand Magellan is essential to understanding this period. In the first chapter of the book he describes the Dark Ages and the culture that existed in those times. He starts the second chapter by jumping to the subject of Ferdinand Magellan and then goes on to cover the first glimmerings of the Renaissance, the reaction of the Church, and then on to the Reformation. The last section of the book then goes back to the life and final voyage of Magellan. How does this all tie together? Manchester does manage to tie it together in the last few pages of the book, but I will not disclose the answer in this writing.
As I read the opening pages of the book, I was struck with one sentence he uses to describe the Dark Ages: “…the portrait which emerges is a melage of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness”. With just a little stretch of the imagination, perhaps this same quote could be applied to our times in the United States with our rejection of science in favor of myths (surveys indicate that up to 37% of Americans reject the theory of evolution) and the impenetrable mindlessness of at least one of our political parties (lowering taxes will always lead to increased job creation and prosperity). As to incessant warfare, we now appear to be involved in wars in at least three middle eastern countries. Progress?
Another concept presented in the book was that the Catholic Church survived this period spite of Christians rather than because of them. The Church had become so corrupt, debased, and autocratic that it is no wonder that Luther was able to break away. The sad part is that he and his followers were just as brutal as the Catholic Church was. Henry the VIII’s new Anglican Church wasn’t much better. William Tyndale, who first translated the New Testament into English, was garroted and his body was drawn and quartered for his crime at the behest of Henry (albeit prior to Henry’s break with Rome). Reading all of this makes one think that the heinous pedophile crimes of the Catholic clergy and subsequent cover-ups in our current era pale by comparison to the acts that were committed in the name of the Church in those earlier times.
Anyway, this is a very interesting book that packs a lot of information and insight into a fairly slim volume in spite of its somewhat different structure.
Comments
A World Lit Only by Fire, The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, Portrait of an Age — No Comments
HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>