The medieval imprint: The founding of the Western European tradition

by John B. Morrall

The Medieval Imprint

Genres: History

173 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[David Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Medieval Imprint gets five stars from me because it compresses a huge amount of information about the transformation of Western and Central Europe from the late Roman Empire to the high Middle Ages and into the Renaissance/Reformation era into just 160 very readable pages. This transformation is viewed through the prisms of Christian theology, Kingly authority and temporal economic development - and how the religious and secular were woven together over those centuries to create the feudal-based system of the Middle Ages. Morrall summarizes the ideas of intellectuals of the age such as St Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas and other lesser-known figures in an incredibly succinct way. He also discusses changing attitudes to women over the era and the rise of towns as economic powerhouses, among other things. What pushed Europe into its Renaissance? The calamitous 14th century, with worsening weather and catastrophic plagues, laid the foundations for the end of the Middle Ages the following century; but it wasn't until the 16th century that writers started viewing the medieval era as a "Middle Age" between Rome and the Renaissance. This brief volume may have a poverty of pages but it contains a great wealth of knowledge.