The Medieval World : Europe 1100-1350

by Heer Friedrich, Janet Sondheimer

Paperback

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History, European History, Art

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

Reviews

[Lauren Albert]

I was not very surprised when I read Heer's brief bio on Goodreads to read: "In 1967 Friedrich Heer became the first winner of the Martin Buber-Franz Rosenzweig Medal, awarded by a group of fourty-four German societies for Christian and Jewish understanding, for his achievement with God's First Love." He was arrested by the Nazis in 1938 and later founded a resistance group. For someone born in 1916, he was remarkably enlightened.
Published in 1961 in German, the book defends the role of women, the importance of Jews and shows the weaknesses of his own, clearly passionately felt, religion. But overall, it is simply a good history of that period of medieval history. He believes that 11th and 12th century Europe was very open compared to later Europe--open to other religions, other cultures, etc. He discusses how and why this changed.

[Bob]

I found this be an absorbing, closely argued, dense, and scholarly account of its subject, which I should mention is NOT the medieval scene as a whole, but instead the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the High Middle Ages (i.e. 1100-1350). My complaints are somewhat minor: It's a little too "scholarly" for my taste--quite a few names (people, sites, art works, literary works) are dropped without a whole lot of context being given. Therefore, it seems targeted more at confirmed medievalists than a general audience. My other quibble has to do with the edition I chose to read (i.e. this one was my own fault). The mass market Mentor/NAL I read possessed kind of small print and not much white space on a page. The layout and font made reading the book more of a chore than it should have been, which is a shame since Heer (or perhaps his translator) is a very fluent writer who knows how to put words together in an interesting way. A shout-out does go to the copious number of illustrations provided in a mass-market paperback. They were pertinent and fascinating. In fact, if any mention of their subjects in the text had been coupled with a reference to the appropriate numbered plate in the illustrations, my initial "too much name-dropping" complaint would have been mitigated somewhat. So, in summary, a good, solid, well-written, thought-provoking, but somewhat dated account of its subject. Worth reading, especially in a hardback/trade paper edition.

[Barbara]

An old college textbook, one assigned in my senior year by a teacher who sparked my interest in history. I think if I had encountered him earlier in college I would have changed my major from English to history. I’ve kept this book since then (and agree with another reviewer who said this Mentor edition is too hard to read because of crowded pages and poor font choice) and wanted to reread it because of that fond memory. But now I find it’s both too general (a huuuge umbrella) and too specific (way too many references to details without the details) to plow through. I’d rather read more targeted histories of the many details he mentions. Still, he was an admirable person and historian. No wonder my teacher revered his book.

[Nicole Marble]

A long book. A detailed book. A fascinating book. Heer makes some fascinating points - the one that interested me the most was that in the early Middle Ages, Europeans all felt they were 'part of Christendom' - one people all pulling together. But as the Roman Church gained and wielded power, it began to demand obedience and dominance which resulted in religious divisions, which divided the church at the time, and of course, eventually resulted in the Protestant Reformation. An excellent book.

[fishskip]

Have always been big on history but have never sought to read anything like this since A-level, and even then I mostly just read about the early soviets. In the past year I've managed to properly sort out my murky/non-existent conception of Napoleonic events, hence I now jump back 500 years to learn what the hell was going on between 1066 and 1666. If you were to believe Herr Heer, you would think that conflict within the church composed 99.9% of daily life and energy expenditure. Now I do concede that religion was a much larger, well ingrained, and tacit aspect of life, however the dullest parts of this book are spent deeply and pedantically embroiled in schisms. To give him credit though the over-arching conclusion of the opposing forces of 'open' society in the 11th/12th century and 'closed' society in the later middle ages is quite intriguing and certainly challenged my caricature of crusading states. Special shoutouts to the coverage of the Hanseatic League, free imperial cities, and the spectrum of free-unfree.

[Anne]

An interesting history, though I found Heer to be a bit anti-religious (strange from a person writing an entire book about a very religious period in European history). I've read better books about the medieval era, but this one wasn't bad.

[Jens Hallgren]

Very interesting reading about the life of ordinary people in the medieval era.

[Ryan Young]

dull.

[Charles]

Looks like a good companion to Heer's amazing INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF EUROPE, a book so good that every paragraph has insights that beg to be highlighted. Some claim the book is too schematic, but I find in it a way to bring highly complex movements into focus, at least until better proposals are found.

[Tom Brooker]

Dry, but informative