Greatest of Centuries

The Thirteenth: Greatest of Centuries by James Walsh, 429 pages

 

This is a book with an argument - that the thirteenth century AD was, in fact, the greatest of centuries.  It was the century when Innocent III met St Francis of Assisi, and St Francis met St Dominic, and the spiritual children of those two saints, St Bonaventure and St Thomas Aquinas, lectured at the University of Paris, which was itself founded in that century, along with the universities of Bologna and Naples, Oxford and Cambridge.  St Bonaventure preached before St Louis, and St Albert the Great taught not only St Thomas, but also Roger Bacon, who was also taught by Robert Grosseteste.  It was the century when the Nibelungenlied, the Arthurian cycle, and the epic of the Cid attained their final forms, when Marco Polo set out from Venice and Dante dwelt seemingly secure in Florence, when the Dies Irae, Pange Lingua, and Stabat Mater were written.  It was the century when the Magna Carta was signed, when the English Parliament and Castilian Cortes became regular institutions, when the Hanseatic League and the Swiss Confederation were formed.  During the course of the century the public hospital became a common urban institution, leading to the near eradication of leprosy from Europe, and the art of the Gothic reached its highest perfection with the cathedral of Chartres and the Sainte Chapelle.

 

This is an incredible and exciting story, and there are 50 pages of appendices briefly covering topics any one of which could have received a full chapter on their own.  The book does have problems, however.  It is over a hundred years old, and while this is not a fatal flaw in itself, in this case not only has subsequent research amended some of the included material, but the extensive use of quotes by contemporary worthies lauding different aspects of the High Middle Ages is greatly diminished in effect by the passage of time rendering the quoted authorities anonymous.  Perhaps a legacy of its origin as a lecture series, the text is sometimes repetitive (the exquisite needlework of the Cope of Ascoli is discussed three times in twenty pages), and the illustrations, while lovely, often have little connection to the text.  Finally, Walsh seems more concerned with justifying the medieval world to moderns than with letting the thirteenth century be itself.

 

A monumental work, but unfortunately long out of date.