Kevin Madigan,Medieval Christianity: A New History

Professor Madigan frankly sets out his purpose in writing this comprehensive and ambitious study. He has sought to ‘synthesize the important new scholarly developments in the four decades since the publication of R. W. Southern’s Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (1970) and ‘to integrate them with some traditional themes and topics in medieval Christianity’. As he notes, there have been changing historiographical fashions since Southern wrote his book (women’s studies; ‘popular religion’; spirituality), and he includes what has been noticed from these viewpoints.

He presents this ‘update’ as ‘a book for beginners’, and that has led to his providing a ‘minimum’ of references and suggestions for further reading. This is a pity because it denies the reader a straightforward route to the sources and the opportunity to follow the path to gaining a better grasp of the thinking of the medieval centuries without which they remain partly opaque to the modern reader.

The book is written, the author promises, as a narrative, beginning with a chapter on ‘Early Christianity’ spanning the centuries from about 150 to 600 ce. This seems an odd choice of dates. Christianity’s origins need to be considered in their context, and it is far from uncontroversial to place the beginning of the Middle Ages at 600. A second chapter takes the reader from 600 to 1050 (covering ‘the conversion of the West’ and the ‘emergence of Celtic Christianity’). From this point the book concentrates on the mid to ‘high’ Middle Ages and becomes partly thematic, taking in succession monasticism and mission; Charlemagne and the Carolingian world; parochial life; various ‘reforms’, notably the Church–State disputes of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

With the late Middle Ages the book moves into its stride and from p. 119, for more than three hundred pages, it covers a variety of aspects of later medieval religious life. There is much here that is rich and interesting and most of what needs to be touched on is explored. The author has set himself a formidable task and it is perhaps invidious to note how often the reader wants to be taken closer to events through more direct contact with original texts.

It is puzzling in a book with this title to find the Greek-speaking half of medieval Christianity almost entirely missing. The index notes only two mentions of ‘Greek churches’, including a passing glance at the schism of 1054 and another at the attempt to mend fences at the Council of Florence three centuries later. This omission is the more startling because of the welcome appearance of a discussion of relations with Jews, 400–1100 and 1096–1492 (Chapters 6 and 17) and relations with Islam c.600–1450 (Chapter 7). This is the main weakness of a good and useful book.