The Civilization of the Middle Ages [antikvár]

PREFACE This book is an extensively revised, thoroughly updated, and substantially expanded version of Medieval History, The Life and Death of a Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1963; second edition, 1968; revised paperback edition, 1974). About one-third of the text is now different from the old version of this book. The old book went through some fourteen printings and was a main selection of the History Book Club, which offered it to its subscribers for nineteen years. It was widely used as a college textbook. The old book was still in print in 1991. Although its core was still viable, it needed major revision, which this book achieves. Intellectually, the main changes and additions in this version reflect the extensive publication on social structure, particularly on women's and family history and on medieval piety and heresy in the past three decades. Greater attention has now been given to the impress of the heritage of the ancient world on the preconditioning of medieval civilization, and the section on patristic thought has been extensively rewritten. The major change between the earlier version and this one is in the latter part of the book, on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which is almost entirely different in this version and greatly expanded. Whereas in the old book the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were treated as a sort of epilogue to medieval civilization, here they are given the same kind of comprehensive narrative treatment as in the rest of the book. This treatment reflects both the enormous body of new historical literature on the late Middle Ages in recent decades and my changed perception of the later centuries of the medieval era. The bibliography in this volume is completely different from the last edition of the old book. It incorporates tides up to 1992.