Europe in the High Middle Ages (The Penguin History of Europe)

"The Penguin History of Europe series... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects."--New Statesman

It was an age of hope and possibility, of accomplishment and expansion. Europe's High Middle Ages spanned the Crusades, the building of Chartres Cathedral, Dante's Inferno, and Thomas Aquinas. Buoyant, confident, creative, the era seemed to be flowering into a true renaissance-until the disastrous fourteenth century rained catastrophe in the form of plagues, famine, and war. 

In Europe in the High Middle Ages, William Chester Jordan paints a vivid, teeming landscape that captures this lost age in all its glory and complexity. Here are the great popes who revived the power of the Church against the secular princes; the writers and thinkers who paved the way for the Renaissance; the warriors who stemmed the Islamic tide in Spain and surged into Palestine; and the humbler estates, those who found new hope and prosperity until the long night of the 1300s. From high to low, from dramatic events to social structures, Jordan's account brings to life this fascinating age. Part of the Penguin History of Europe series, edited by David Cannadine.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

• The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe Book 2)
• The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (The Penguin History of Europe)
• Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517-1648 (The Penguin History of Europe)
• The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815 (The Penguin History of Europe)
• The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 (The Penguin History of Europe Book 7)
• To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 (The Penguin History of Europe)
• The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017 (The Penguin History of Europe)
• The Lais of Marie De France: With Two Further Lais in the Original Old French (Penguin Classics)
• Readings in Medieval History, Volume II: The Later Middle Ages, Fifth Edition
• Medieval Europe