Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

The biblical scholar Augustine, prior of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Rome, was selected by Pope Gregory I to lead the famous English mission of 597 that persuaded King Aethelbert of Kent to embrace Christianity and kick-started the conversion of Saxon England. The mathematician and astronomer Gerbert of Aurillac, who brought the abacus to Europe in the late tenth century and wrote several well-regarded mathematical textbooks, rose to the papacy itself, as Pope Sylvester II. Then there was Alcuin of York, the Englishman who sat for many years at the right hand of Charlemagne. The chronicler Einhard described Alcuin as the most learned man in the whole world;