Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #159006 in Books
• Published on: 1997-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1196 pages

Customer Reviews

An intellectual tour-de-force!!
Durant is a brilliant macrohistorian. He gives a broad, but concise picture of various facets of historical development-economic, political, cultural, religious and scientific-in the course of the Age of Faith. This is a sweeping grand narrative of one thousand years of a burgeoning Christian and Islamic civilization. Many historians have a peculiar aversion to the middle ages, because it is perceived as an intellectually unenlightened era. These historians typically take a cue from Edward Gibbon and loathe the fall of Rome perpetually until they reach the Renaissance. Durant, however, demonstrates evenhandedness in chronicling the development of Western Civilization in the middle ages and its interaction with the Oriental civilizations of Byzantium and Islam. Durant shows the centuries of interactions between Popes and kings, nobles and peasant, and really gives the reader a feel for the cultural, economic and societal developments in Christendom. Durant tells of Justinian who strove to keep Rome intact and summarily failed. Instead of wailing over the remains of Pax Romana like some historians, Durant shifts to offering a perceptively detailed history of Byzantium and the rising `barbarian' kingdoms of the Franks, Visigoths and Goths. He chronicles the growth of the Christian church with intriguing biographical sketches of church fathers such as St. Augustine, St. Benedict and St. Francis. His account of the Crusades is both remarkable and informative and too me it makes this book invaluable. The Venetian treachery against Constantinople is well detailed. Durant sketches the development of Britannia from its Celtic beginnings to the birth of England and the pivotal battle at Hastings in 1066, which forever shaped the realm and the course of history. His account of the Norsemen-Normans, Danes, Vikings and Icelanders-is remarkably interesting. Durant paves the way for the transition to Renaissance with his chapters dealing with Epistemology, Christian Science, the Christian theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas and the poet Dante. He shows that the medieval times were actually the bedrock for the Renaissance of classical culture. It was the pious monks of Christendom and the sages of Islam that preserved the classics of hollowed antiquity. It is my estimation that no serious student history can be without Durant's Story of Civilization series. Likewise, anyone interested in the middle ages should get a copy of the Age of Faith. If you're interested in the middle ages, I also recommend books by John Julius Norwich.

Dante...and so much more...
If you have never had the pleasure -- and good
fortune -- to discover Will Durant and this series
on THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION, then prepare yourself
for insight, enrichment, and cultural nurturing.
Few sources concerning history and culture, with
a strongly philosophical underpinning, can enlighten
as does this series.
Each volume in the series is subdivided into
a number of BOOKS, and each of these subdivisions
is further subdivided into Chapters of various
sections. But the flow, interest, and detail are
on-going, clear, and stimulating. These are volumes
not only for scholars but also for general readers
yearning -- longing -- to understand the flow and
interactions of history, culture, and thought.

This volume is number 4 in the series. The Books
into which it is subdivided are: "The Byzantine
Zenith: A.D. 325-565" -- "Islamic Civilization:
A.D. 569-1258" -- "Judaic Civilization: A.D. 135-
1300" -- "The Dark Ages: A.D. 566-1095" -- "The
Climax of Christianity: A.D. 1095-1300".
This volume opens with the Chapter on "Julian
the Apostate" and closes with a lengthy chapter
on "Dante: 1265-1321." That is certainly an
interesting span, not only in time, but in
personality and focus, as well.
The Chapter (38) leading into the Chapter on
Dante (39) is a wondrous, interesting presentation
of "The Age of [Medieval] Romance: 1100-1300."
It includes sections titled: The Latin Revival;
Wine, Women, and Song; The Rebirth of Drama;
Epics and Sagas; The Troubadours; The Minnesingers;
The Romances; The Satirical Reaction. There are
excellent excerpts from some of the types, as
well as intriguing discussion of how the types
evolved, interacted, and interfused. Here is
an example of the presentation from "The Romances":
"But in romance the middle class had already
captured the field. As aristocratic troubadours
and TROVATORI wrote delicate lyrics for the
ladies of sourther France and Italy, so in
northern France the poets of humble birth --
known to the French as trouveres, or inventors --
brightened the evenings of the middle and upper
classes with poetic tales of love and war.
The typical compositions of trhe trouveres
were the BALLADE, the LAI, the CHANSON DE GESTE,
and the ROMAN."

Durant proceeds to talk about Marie de France
and gives one of her entire lyrics in the text.
He then goes on to discuss the CHANSONS DE GESTE
and their successors, the ROMAN (or Romances).
There are excellent sections on the writers
Walther von der Vogelweide, Chretien de Troyes,
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasbourg,
and Hartmann von Aue. This chapter serves as a
excellent, rich, historical and cultural background
for the chapter on Dante which follows.
The chapter on Dante is divided into the sections:
The Italian Troubadours; Dante and Beatrice; The
Poet in Politics; and a final full and rich section
on THE DIVINE COMEDY, itself. One excerpt from the
text cannot be passed by, without quotation:
"In the epic of Dante's life, his exile was
his hell, his studies and his writings were
his purgation, his hope and love were his
redemption and his only bliss. Virgil, who
guides Dante through hell and purgatory stands
for knowledge, reason, wisdom, which can lead
us TO the portals of happiness; only faith
and love can lead us IN."

Wondrous, incredible, satisfying...

Was it solely the age of faith?
History and its study has always been a daunting task, both in terms of the length of time it takes a reader to assimilate the knowledge of a particular period of history, and also the painstaking attention to detail that the historian must engage in. The gravitational pull on this book is appreciable, as is the case for most books on history, but for the person curious about the events of 300-1300, events that still have a major influence on the present, it is well worth the time needed for its perusual. The authors are sometimes cynical in their appraisal of these times, and one can detect a measure of hostility towards religion in their writing, but their style of writing is both interesting and at times very entertaining, and it certainly keeps the readers attention.

One can disagree of course in labeling a particular period in history as "The Dark Ages" solely on the basis of a personal belief that the ideas of that time do not meet certain criteria of "enlightment". The authors do label the period AD 566 - 1095 as the Dark Ages, but they do so not only from the standpoint of the intellectual climate of the time, but also from an economic one. That progress was not occurring during that time at a rate that it was capable of, is the message implicitly given by the authors.

The book takes on through a time period that saw the rise of figures whose ideas are held by most of today's populations. The rapid rise of Islam via the personage of Mohammed, the struggles of the Jewish people, and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire are brilliantly detailed by the authors. The Koran, the Talmud, and the Bible all coexisted, the beliefs expressed in these books had considerable overlap, and the tension between them has endured till now. One should not however conclude that this tension has always been a detriment to humankind. Most of the readers of these books, a considerable majority in fact, have never engaged in violence or deliberate conflict. The wars brought about by a small minority, who claim special status in their interpretation of the contents of these books, should not lead to a hasty conclusion that the rare perturbations that wars make to history are in fact all of history itself.

All peoples in the present time owe much to the efforts of those in the period discussed in the book. Modern science has its roots of course in ancient Greece, but it took Islamic scholars, with their efforts to translate the works of the Greeks, particularly Aristotle, to set the stage for science. The authors introduce us to Averroes, the 12 century "Stagrite" and scholar; to Muhammed ibn Musa of the 8th century, one of the great mathematicians of his time , giving us algebra, the latter term coined by the Arabs; to Abu Hanifa, a 9th century botanist/pharmacologist, and to many other Arabic/Islamic seekers and purveyors of wisdom. An entire chapter is devoted to the brilliant Christian scholar/philosopher/rationalist Abelard, who set the stage for the Scholastic philosophy of Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. The reader also is introduced to the Jewish scholar Maimonides, his philosophy and his "Glossary on Drugs". Clearly, the age of faith had its share of brilliance.

The age of faith should thus be seen as an age of discovery as well as prayer. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scholars were laying the foundations of knowledge as well as propagating their faith. This superposition of faith and reason continues in our day, and shows no sign of being abated. In this regard, this book is almost like a chronicle of our own time. We now have computers, genetic engineering, robotics, and space travel; but we also have churches, synagogues, tabernacles, temples, and mosques. The history of our own time, and that described in this book, could thus be viewed as a mere change of names and dates. The goals in both time periods are the same: the unrelenting quest for new knowledge and the reaching out for something intangible and beyond ourselves.