1 August, 2003
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, William Manchester (322 pp, TPB, 1993).
My knowledge of world history is, frankly, appalling. I have familiarity with some specific eras, locales, and topics, gleaned from watching the History Channel, and reading the occasional book, but I don't have much understanding of how all the bits tie together, nor do I know the whole story, as it were. This is a situation I intend to change over the next n years.
This book is about one of the great revolutions in Western Civilization, the transition from medieval times to the modern era: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and all that stuff. The author's introduction indicates that his intention was to 1) describe the change itself, and 2) show how the change came about through the confluence of multiple factors: rampant corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, the development of nation states, the emergence of a merchant class, and the fall of the Byzantine Empire, to name a few.
Manchester does a decent job at the first task. He describes the medieval mindset, and the political and religious structure of Europe during the Dark Ages (there wasn't much difference between the two), and goes on to relate various historical bits which, taken as a whole, set the stage for the Reformation. That all takes up about a third of the book. The second third is all about the Reformation proper: its history and its effect on the political and intellectual landscape. (If Manchester is to be believed, Martin Luther was totally insane! And not in a good way!) The third part of the book shifts gears from the political-religious angle, and looks at the Age of Exploration, with an emphasis on Magellan's voyage. (Manchester says in the intro that the book started life as a foreword to a Magellan biography.)
The book is at its best when the author is relating a straightforward narrative, as in the story of Martin Luther and that of Magellan. It is not so good at providing the "big picture" that I was hoping for. Lots of informative anecdotes, but not much of the connective tissue promised in the introduction.
That being said, A World Lit Only by Fire is an easy read, Manchester tells a good story. I guess this is kind of a "pop history" book, rather than a serious piece of scholarly analysis.
Of course, a history book of any sort should not only be judged on its entertainment value, but on its accuracy. As I said, I am not well-educated on this historical period, so I'm not really qualified to judge. I do have concerns, though, because Manchester makes some errors in two of the things which I do know something about. The first is the Copernican revolution. There, he gets his facts straight, such as they are, but his interpretation is, in my opinion, flawed (or at least, overly-simplified). (I took two whole classes on that stuff in college, so I know what I'm talking about, there.) The other problem is that he gives way too much credence to all the worst, most outrageous characterizations of Anne Boleyn which (according to the more serious works I've read on the subject of Henry VIII and his wives) have been discredited as slander used to justify Henry VIII's desire to get rid of her in favor of Jane Seymour.