Books – Book Review - The Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of the Catholic Europe – Thomas Cahill

This is my second book for the What’s in a Name Reading Challenge. This book fits the category of TIME of day: the Middle Ages.

Cahill has written non-fiction works to exam certain times in history that have affected the Western World. I have read How the Irish Saved Civilization and the Gifts of the Jews. He also wrote about Greek civilization and the world before and after Jesus Christ’s life. I need to read them, so I can understand my fiction reading more.

Nan Talese, a Doubleday imprint, was nice enough to send me this autographed copy in 2006, but with my loss of concentration after the Katrina, I wasn’t able to concentrate on such an important work until recently.

First of all, the book is beautiful. The hardback copy has the nicest paper that I have seen recently. There are pictures of art works from the Middle Ages, reproduced in color, and there are some newer illuminations at the side, that look like older ones.

Cahill wasn’t able to cover every topic of the Middle Ages, but I did learn some important facts. If you are not Catholic, he assumes that you don’t know too much and makes clear explanations of the beliefs and policies of the Church at that time.

• Hildegard was a lonely child and adult.If she hadn’t been rich, by the time she was 8 years old, she would have been betrothed. Boys would be starting their apprenticeships.
• The nuns in Hildegard’s order didn’t cut their hair or cover it up. They wore white, silk veils and you could see their long hair.
• Eleanor of Aquitane learned to read both Latin and Oc (Old French of the South) – very unusual.
• When she married and moved to Louis’ palace in Paris, she brought tapestries from Bruge to add a layer of color to the walls and to add insulation.She made everyone eat with tablecloths and napkins.Her pages had to wash their hands before serving the food.Theatrical troupes and troubadours entertained.
• Universities generally followed the Greek model recommended by Julius Ceasar’s librarian, Varro, who died in 27 BC.
• The first university in Europe was started in Bologna in the 1100s.
• Six years of lectures in grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, Eucledean geometry, astronomy, and musical theory. Two years of debates and lectures, to let everyone know what they had learned. More time was required to study medicine and architecture. After oral exams, students got a BA. One more year of study yielded an MA and the right to teach. 12 more years you could study law, medicine, philosophy, or theology. Most of the students had the means to study for such long times, but there were scholarships for poorer students. Sometimes a nobleman send a smart but poor boy to the university, so that when the boy graduated, he would return home and increase the intellectual atmosphere of the place.
• Peter Abelard rejected the idea that the Jewish people killed Jesus.
• The Muslims kept copies of Aristotle’s writings, and through a team of Arabic, Greek, Jewish, and Christian scholars in Spain, had them translated into Latin.
• Thomas Aquinas used these teachings from Aristotle to develop the positive idea of a loving God and Jesus, instead of a vindictive one.
• Roger Bacon at Oxford, was the first scholar to study natural sciences using observation and experimentation.
• St. Francis of Assisi first presented a manger scene with people and live animals.
• Giotto di Bondone started drawing realistic scenes and drew people in profile, not staring straight at you, as prescribed by Byzantine rules.
• Due to political intrigues, Dante was sentenced in absentia to death in 1302. He spent one or two years in different Italian cities until he died in Ravenna in 1321. He was finally reunited with his family in Ravenna in 1319.
• Cahill gives a thorough explanation of his poem, Commedia, so if you have never read it, you will be tempted to try to read it.
• 
  For those who wish they could live as royalty in those times, I wouldn’t recommend it. Despite the fact that the royals changed their clothes often and that incense was constantly burning, a castle (even a large one) would reek, because there were only chamber pots, not toilets, for waste evacuation. Eiu.

His style of writing was clear and fun at the same time. The only thing that was a bit out of place was the last chapter. He is not happy with recent Church actions and explains why. It really had nothing to do with the topic of the book; I guess he was trying to motivate his readers to do something about the situation.