Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

From Isidore’s day in the sixth century until the end of the Middle Ages (and beyond) the Church had a firm grip on western education and scholarship. As much as anything else this was a matter of practicality. Like Judaism and, as it would soon transpire, Islam, Christianity was a religion rooted in the word of God, and his word was transmitted primarily through being written, read, and heard. Saint Paul, the apostle who did more than anyone else to publicize Christ’s teachings, was an educated man with a working knowledge of several languages and a healthy smattering of philosophy. The next five hundred years produced many more great thinkers and writers like him. Saintly scholars such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome were load-bearing walls in the intellectual and liturgical architecture of the Church—and by extension in the lives of millions of medieval Christians.