Those Terrible Middle Ages! Quotes

“Marx’s Manifesto, pub­lished in 1847, reflects the state of historical science of the period. It fixes the thirteenth century as the beginning of the “battle against feudal absolutism” and attributes to the bourgeoisie “an essentially revolutionary role” in history. Did the bourgeoisie not uproot the countryside from a “state of torpor and latent barbarism”? These are all propositions that are today [1977] unacceptable for the historian; those who continue to perpetuate such errors of vocabulary, which are intellectually necessary if one wants to maintain at any price the feudalism-bourgeoisie-proletariat, prolong an am­biguity just as erroneous as the continued use of the term "Gothic ” during the era of Marx. In other words, the Marxist historians, who speak of feudalism destroyed by the French revolution, make one think of those ecclesiastics who see in the Second Vatican Council the "end of the Constantinian period” — as if nothing had happened, in more than sixteen hundred years, between Constantine and Vatican II.”
― Régine Pernoud, Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths

“The king of France is emperor in his kingdom . . . his will has the force of law”— such principles, at the time they were proclaimed, were purely utopian; but nothing is more common in world history than to see utopias become realities. In this case, some two hundred years were necessary.”
― Régine Pernoud, Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths

“We should also recall the music with which all education begins. We have seen how our civilization, from the musical point of view, still remains indebted to the "Dark Ages' that invented the scale! [......] Up until the thirteenth century, there was no separation between musical language and poetic language: there was no poetry without melody; the poet was at the same time a musician. It is important to remember that at that time, if not everyone learned to read, everyone did learn to sing.”
― Régine Pernoud, Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths

“History does not furnish any solution, but it permits — and it alone permits — us to pose the problems corrrectly.”
― Régine Pernoud, Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths