Howdy! We’re 2 medieval historians and authors of the brand new (just out December 7) The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe with Harper Books. Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies and chair of the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. David M. Perry was formerly a professor of history at Dominican University, but now is a journalist, medieval historian, and senior academic advisor in the history department at the University of Minnesota.
We’ve both been interested for a long time not just in what happened in medieval Europe, but in how the Middle Ages are remembered and used in the modern world. Before this book, we’d published stuff in The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, The Daily Beast, and on CNN, but we wanted with this book to step back, take a broader view, and return to the Middle Ages themselves. And what The Bright Ages does is to shine light on the period, to counter the zombie myth of the “Dark Ages” by showing medieval Europe in all its color, all its humanity.
The word “medieval” conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors.
The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today.
The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire” but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics.
And that last bit, we think, is really important. The European Middle Ages are not a period that needs universal condemnation, but neither does it need rescuing and praise. The period was filled with people who made decisions, who created beauty and art, but also committed atrocities. The fullness of the past is what we’re after, told in a fun, accessible way that has something for those who know something about the period as well as those who know nothing (yet).
A review in Slate said “While all of this is the sort of stuff that professional medievalists love to see, the thing I like most about Perry and Gabriele’s effort is that it is fun. The Bright Ages is written in such an engaging and light manner that it is easy to race through. I found myself at the end of chapters faster than I wanted to be, completely drawn in by the narrative. You can tell how much the authors love the subject matter, and that they had a great time choosing stories to share and evidence to consider.”
And podcaster Mike Duncan said “The Bright Ages shines a light on an age too often obscured by myth, legend, and fairy tales. Traveling easily through a thousand years of history, The Bright Ages reminds us society never collapsed when the Roman Empire fell, nor did the modern world wake civilization from a thousand-year hibernation. Gabriele and Perry show the medieval world was neither a romantic wonderland nor a deplorable dungeon, but instead a real world full of real people with hopes, dreams, and fears making the most of their time on earth.”
If you’d like a chance to win a FREE copy of The Bright Ages**,** please just fill out this form. We’ll select some of our favorite questions and answers and contact them to receive a copy of the book.
We look forward to talking with you. So, ask us anything!
UPDATE: we'll be here until 1pm (ET) though we'll try to check back in from time to time later. keep those questions coming and don't forget to register for a chance at a FREE COPY OF THE BRIGHT AGES.
UPDATE 2: ok, thanks everyone! Our time has run its course... David and Matt will periodically check back in late today but we have to run to other work. These questions were AMAZING and we had so much fun. Please get a copy of the book and talk to y'all soon!
Would you recommend this book as the primary text for a medieval history course, or as a supplement? And if the latter, what text would you recommend as the primary one?
Thank you both for doing this AMA! I have two questions if that's alright
Is there anything that you ending up changing your own opinions on when you were doing research for this book?
What's the best way to break down these myths in the public imagination? Is it through improving how the period is taught in school or trying to change how it's presented in pop culture?
edit: third question! Is the free copy available only in the US or worldwide?
Greetings to both Doctors! I look forward to cracking open a copy of the book in the fullness of time.
First, and entirely out of personal interest, do you spare any time to dealing with Medieval Water Myth? (The one about the Medievals drinking alcohol instead of water because the water was bad - you're both medievalists, you must have heard some form of it already.)
Second, what's a favourite thing/detail/event/anything at all that you so dearly wanted to include in the book but couldn't?
As a medievalist myself I'm often struck by how varied medieval philosophy is - even as an undergraduate we were still being taught that you can basically skip everything between Augustine and Aquinas because it wasn't very interesting or important (how dare they skip John of Salisbury's Policraticus!) when that's not true at all. The blurb mentions "the genius of Hildegard" and you've brought up the Song of Silence in another comment, so I'm guessing there's a bit of medieval philosophy in there. However, the likes of John of Salisbury and Hildegard of Bingen are not exactly light reading, or fun for the general public, nor does it lend itself to the sweeping narrative that general histories of the Middle Ages have to do. So how did you go about finding and writing about the historical figures and primary sources that both make the points you wanted to make while still maintaining the pace and tone of the book?
I thought the recent adaptation of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT was interesting, and drew a lot of people to a poem they may not really know outside of perhaps a brief encounter in high school English. And though I didn’t see it (and it appears to have been bad), THE LAST DUEL also told a story that wasn’t familiar to most people. What medieval historical event or work of literature do you think would make a good adaptation that most people wouldn’t know?
Thanks for doing this AMA!
What's the biggest misconception people tend to have about the Middle Ages?
Would Medieval wine and beer taste terrible to today's drinker, or would it be quite pleasant?
Hello and thank you for doing this!
When I think of Medieval history books, I first think of narrative arcs that cover broad swaths of time and discuss high politics and religion and large trends and so on. Grand but distant, if you know what I mean.
So my question is, while researching this book, did you have any moments where you had a flash of human connection to a particular person or event? The sort of moment where it really hits you that this was a real person that you could empathize with, so to speak.
Thank you for doing this AMA!
Hope you don't mind me asking the dreaded question of definition - what defines 'Medieval Europe'? What are the commonalities (or differences!) over a thousand years of European history?
As a UMN history undergrad - @Lollardfish, can you just add two credits to my transcript so I can graduate in spring instead of taking a single class this summer? XD
On a more serious note, though I haven't been able to get my hands on it yet, I'm curious to know how much you touch on the progress of science and medicine in this period. It's my area of focus, though I'm looking at a period later than medieval, and I love to see how these areas evolve and change over time. I know that the medieval period was not nearly as stagnant as we might have thought scientifically, but I'm just curious. :)
Thank you for this great AMA! Here on AH we spend a lot of time fighting back against popular myths or misconceptions. Are there any particular examples that you love to engage with? Something you find particularly influential/malicious you'd banish if you could?
And if you'd permit a second follow up, do you have any suggestions on good ways to keep fighting back against such myths?
Hello! Thanks for taking the time to do an AMA for us!
I am personally very passionate in making Medieval history more accessible to non-academics, particularly given many of the misconceptions that have endured for decades. Do you think that the way forward for historians (not just Medievalists) is to shift their focus towards writing more public history alongside more traditional scholarly work? How do you think we should go about balancing demand and competing with the pop historians who often inadvertently further misconceptions and misinformation?
As someone with a BA in Medieval Studies who is know to shout "Don't call it the Dark Ages!" in casual conversation, I love that this book exists. Not a question about medieval history, but about working in a history career. Do you see many opportunities for people with an interest in public history and medieval history to find work in the United States? I have been working on building a career in museums, but I have assumed that outside of working in an art museum with a large medieval collection, I will likely have to focus on other areas of history rather than the era I focused on in undergrad.
Don't you think there is a legitimate use for dark ages in the case of post Roman Britain, much of Gaul, and Hispania for the couple of hundred years of chaos where urbanity, reading, building, and political structures collapsed?
Hi both, thanks for doing this AMA!
As far as I'm aware, historical consensus still seems to paint sub-Roman Britain as a place where the "dark ages" narrative holds true. This is in reference to things like the lack of surviving literary output (with Gildas being an exception, albeit probably from towards the end of the period), the apparent material simplicity as Bryan Ward-Perkins has accounted for, and the lack of complex social configurations as the likes of Robin Fleming and Alex Woolf amongst others have written on. This is in contrast to much of the Mediterranean basin and even most of central and western Europe as far as I'm aware, where Peter Brown's "late antiquity" argument holds true as culture continued to flourish. So my questions are as follows.
Would you seek to apply the bright ages narrative to southern Britain c. 420-600?
If not, what do you think is the reason for these fundamental distinctions?
Still waiting on my copy to be delivered, but wanted to ask Dr. Gabriele now that he is no longer the resident faculty advisor at WAJ if he can return to unabashedly cheering for Hickory House again?
On a serious note, as someone who is new to #MedievalTwitter, what are some good entry points, besides your book?
Hello!
Seeing that you guys cited the iberian peninsula and the interactions between christians and muslims during the Middle Ages, what do you guys see as withstanding legacies of this period? What are the cultural consequences of this time in the region (or even in its later colonies, like Brasil - from whence I am)?
In the book you engage with the term "Dark Ages" as a reference to the entire period between Rome and the Renaissance. I found that interesting because while I've heard that reference, I've more frequently encountered "Dark Ages" used to refer to the first part of that thousand-year period (circa 500 to 1000 CE) with "Medieval" not as a synonym for "Dark Ages" but as a distinct period that followed it.
Is that perioditization prominent in the historiography, or is my mind just confused?
And setting aside the loaded-ness of the term "Dark Ages," do you think there's value in distinguishing between the first and second halves of this period, with the latter period ("High Middle Ages"?) generally featuring a larger, more urban population than the period before it? (Of course, the big issue with perioditization is "For which area?" with the Middle East exhibiting different patterns here than Western Europe.)
Would this text be appropriate for teaching advanced high school students or early undergrads? I teach medieval lit and philosophy & do a lot of this reclamation work myself.
I haven't had a chance to read The Bright Ages yet, but I just wanted to ask a few questions:
I hope it’s ok for me to ask Dr. Gabriele about some of his other work. If not, feel free to ignore!
What do you think were the main reasons why Charlemagne became this legendary figure in the centuries after his death, with all this nostalgia surrounding his time in power?
What drew you to the memory of Charlemagne as an area of study?
I sadly slept through this AMA (a downside to living in Australia), but in case you see this when you check back, I just wanted to say that the book is fantastic. It's really hard to tackle misconceptions about the medieval world in a way that reveals the light without blinding to the dark, but you managed to walk the fine line.
I was also wondering: are there any stories or concepts that you wanted to include but couldn't because they either didn't quite fit the flow or because they would have added too much bulk to the book?
As I understand it, the announcement of the First Crusade resulted in around 2,000 or 3,000 Jewish people being lynched, mostly by peasants in Germany and France. Why did this happen? How did rulers respond to this? Was similar violence triggered by the announcement of later crusades?
Thanks to both of you for doing this, I am so very excited to work through the book over the holidays! On to the question:
In recent years, I've seen a really strong revival of the idea of the "secret pagan cult" in various medieval European places, particularly those associated in some way with the Vikings (Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a game I have spent far too much time looking critically at, does this frequently, but it's in more places than just there). Obviously, medieval Europe was a religiously diverse place - you've talked in the thread about European medieval Islam, Miri Ruben has spent a lot of time working on medieval Judaism's visibility in medieval cities, and of course popular Christianities are extremely diverse. But, in my estimate, polytheistic paganisms get fairly thoroughly eradicated (as active belief - they obviously remain deeply important culturally and in folk traditions outside of religious practice for centuries, as my own research into Norse reception focuses on). However, a lot of the "weird things" cough Christmas trees cough are assigned an ancient origin despite all evidence suggesting an origin from and compatibility with Christianity.
So, my question is - how do you treat religion in the book in order to make the huge, but also limited, diversity of belief in medieval Europe accessible? How do you go about breaking down the image of monolithic religions that is so deeply engrained in popular consciousness without thereby encouraging the idea of outrageously durable pagan cults lurking under the surface?
Based on the blurb above, it seems that Bright Ages doesn't cover the historiography of medieval Europe. Is that fair? That's not a bad thing, just making sure I understand what sort of book it is.
Hey, thanks for doing this AMA! I have two questions so far:
As a layperson with an interest in history, I only recently discovered how integral the Ottoman Empire was in historical conceptions of "Europe" (let alone other Islamic centers like Baghdad, which you mentioned elsewhere in the thread). I think this is also a common short-sightedness among laypeople, at least in the US. When did the average person stop considering important middle eastern polities to be part of Europe? Is this restricted to laypeople, or did historians in previous eras also adopt this view?
I recently bought "Medieval Cities" by Henri Pirenne, not realizing how old it was (whoops). I still read it and found it very interesting; what would you recommend as a follow-up on the topic of medieval city development and civilizational continuity/transition after the fall of the western Roman empire? (Is it your book?)
Thanks so much!
What does the mainstream academic history of the medieval period miss that your book points out? The public perception of the "dark ages" is obviously quite different from the academic, so I'm wondering if you found something that academia was likely wrong about too.
How important were independent cities (say, the Hansa / free cities in the HRE, or small quasi-city-states in northern italy) to this period?
Hello! I am not a historian by any means - I just lurk in this sub to pick up interesting nuggets of information.
This book, to my uneducated mind, sounds a bit like "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker who argues that, despite constant bombardment of negativity in media, we actually live in the most peaceful, nonviolent time in human history. It kind of goes against a lot of commonly-perceived feelings.
Forgive me if I'm way off base, but this book sounds similar - we all (or most of us) have been sort of conditioned to think about the "Dark Ages" as violent, ignorant, and scary. I look forward to reading something that pushes against that narrative.
So my question is, given all that: If you could magically go back and live during some time in the centuries you cover in this book, would you? Do you think you could live relatively peacefully and comfortably? Barring no access to modern medicine and such...
Thanks for doing this AMA!
So since time is short, I'll be brief. I'm aware that a lot of the Vikings ended up Christianizing and sticking around, especially in places like Orkney or the Western Isles of Scotland.
Is there any evidence that religious travel temporarily moved in a pagan direction? What cultural affect did pagan presence have on the local populations invaded by vikings?
Many nations often talk about their "Golden Ages" in the Medieval Era, a period in which their countries reached their cultural, territorial and political apogee. For Bulgarians this was in the 9th and early 10th centuries, for Georgians it was the late 12th and early 13th century. How realistic is it to talk about such "Golden Eras" in general and how do you think such sentiments affect the historiography of these periods?
Hello and thank you for this opportunity! Any insight on how the 'barbarian' tribes that invaded Rome were able to change the Roman-Latin culture? What was their method? Extermination, conversion.... And why from that point on would Italy remain so divided for so long? There were clear reasons in later centuries for its divisions, but after the invasions? thank you!
What was the experience of people with disabilities in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean? Given the state of medical care at that time, I imagine there were many individuals with both acquired and congenital conditions who were still able to function at various levels. Are there any writings about the everyday lives of those individuals or people who cared for them?
Hi, and congratulations on publishing such a great book! Already got a copy from my local library right before you posted this AMA.
The typical revisionist narrative we see is that during the Middle Ages, China and Western Asia were the ”centers of the world” compared to the “backwater European periphery.” How true is this narrative? Is there an argument to be made for a “dark ages” methodology of studying either of those societies, or even those of the Mesoamericans and Indians, in contrast to their popular “bright ages” methodology?
This is a strange question, but I saw a post on this subreddit maybe 1 or 2 days ago saying that medieval parents would sometimes use genital stimulation to discipline their children. Obviously I highly doubt that this is true, but have you ever heard of anything like this before?
Thanks for doing this AMA
Hi, and thanks for doing this AMA!! I have two Qs:
Any chance y'all go on Dan Carlin's show? I think it'd be a great fit, especially with the glowing reviews from Mike Duncan!
I took a class in college on the early Middle Ages and at the beginning of the semester the teacher basically summed up the period as not uniquely dark or barbaric, but weird to the modern mind. What are some of the weirdest things y'all came across while working on this book?
Thank you for doing this AMA!
I’m curious how much music is (if at all) discussed in the book, as well as if there are any misconceptions about music history from this period?
Does the book discuss governance in the medieval Europe?
The prevailing popular image seems to be that medieval Europe was full of absolute monarchies, but of course the reality was very different.
There are some interesting stories to be told about early parliaments, proto-constitutional charters, the development of political theory, the legal developments, and city-state republicanism.
Does the book go into those things at all?
The Roman era was famous for its vast trade network, and shipped olives, fish, meat, grain, salt, garum, dates, olive oil, wine, beer, and other foods across thousands of miles. So when we start talking about the medieval era:
What do you think about efforts by certain people, of varying political and social perspectives, to create counter-narratives about the medieval period's superiority? Do you think that such counter-narratives could replace the "dung ages" narrative about medieval life in popular culture?
If a non-noble person smashes the head of another non-noble person with a blunt object in the middle of the square of a Frankish 6-9th century town. What happens then?
Will this person be killed, "arrested" or will nothing happen?
When it comes to depicting the medieval era, it seems like Hollywood gets it wrong so much more than it gets it right, especially when it comes to costume design and set design. Especially in recent decades, medieval movies seem to have taken a turn towards the "grim," with washed out colors and lots of mud--in contrast with the bright Technicolor romances of the 50s and 60s.
So, what are your favorite medieval movies? That could either be because they got some aspect(s) of the era "right" or just because they are enjoyable cinema. Thanks in advance!
Norbert Elias’ History of Manners and Civilizing Process famously uses books of manners and etiquette to trace changing social norms. A lot of the medieval examples are really gross. I’ve always been fascinated by the one maxim cited by Elias to the effect that when sleeping at an inn and sharing a bed with a stranger, if you pop in the bed at night, you shouldn’t pick up the poo, wake up your bedmate, and ask them to smell it. There are a lot of other poo maxims he cites culminating in the relatively “civilized” don’t wash your hands in the dining room because it might remind the other dinners of your poo. Were medieval peoples—at least the French, Germans, and Northern Italians he mostly speaks about—this free with their poos? Did they really poo the bed and share the turd with randoms?
Where do you see Medieval studies going in the future? What topics, questions will need to be revisited to get beyond our current understanding of the middle ages?
I've missed this by a big margin, sounds like a nice read.
Given how "bright" the Medieval Period was, where does the common conception of it being a dark age come from? Do you accept the hypothesis that this is due to Jacob Burckhardt's portrayal of the period in his book The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy?
What can you tell us about the reaction in Europe at the time to a Christian kingdom in Ethiopia. Was it a discovery? Was it already well known in the Mediterranean? /u/The_Kek_5000/ would like to know what you could tell us.
Hello! Amazing project you've got there, I am so thankful that you've shed a new light on this period; it's both been the best and worst of times, in my opinion. My question is how did we come to this denomination of the Dark Ages and why? Surely historical evidence would show otherwise, so why wait so long for a new fresh view on it? And how did it affect our vision(s) of history? Thank you!
What is something you find interesting about the Church during that time that you didn't know before you started your research?
To what degree was pre-Conquest 11th Century England an outlier from Western European culture in those aspects that are considered quintessentially medieval or "Dark Ages" in popular (mis)conception nowadays (e.g. knights, chivalry, feudalism, illiteracy and ignorance)? I.e. was Anglo-Saxon England "more" or "less" what people popularly think of as "medieval" than the rest of Western Europe?
If it was a significant outlier, was that changed by the Norman Conquest?
Would Imperial era romans have more in common in terms of language and culture with late medieval residents of Rome or Constantinople?
My conception of early middle age historiography is shaped by the idea that there's a relative lack of written primary source material, especially from Britain, taught in undergrad histororiography classes where it was specifically used as an example of how to study a time and place despite a relative lack of primary sources. I distinctly remember a prof telling us that the 'dark age' trope is inaccurate, but the term could be better applied to this era to refer to the lack of sources to draw from in this period rather than its usual use as a value judgement. Is this still true, is it an outdated view, or was it perhaps never actually true? I understand that I might be pushing the definition of 'medieval' a bit here.
To what extent do medievalists look at Jewish sources and Jews? There was an question about medieval parenting practices yesterday in which the answerer said that we don't have much information about parenting because the only literate people were clerics, who were celibate. When I pointed out that that's only true of Latin and asked if Rashi, RaMBaM, and other rishonim have any opinions on parenting, as they actually were parents, he said that he only works on Western European subjects and can't speak to others. Rashi was based out of Troyes (and I'd mentioned he may have written in Zarphatic, Judeo-French) and RaMBaM Cordoba (which, yeah, isn't always considered Europe).
Hello! I know I'm a little late, but I have a fun one. I've been thinking a lot about Martin Lawrence's Black Knight. I'm Brazilian and I was appalled when I first found out the original title was that - here, it's called "Goofiness in the Middle Ages", which seems a right title for a silly comfy comedy flick. Took a while to understand that to Americans there is an association between the word black (person) and being funny or quirky which doesn't exist here. We have that exact association with other ethnicities, like Northeastern Brazilians, but I digress.
I know comedies aim at absurd situations. However, they do go back an foward from verossimilitude to absurdity and so on. How "realistic" and how "absurd" would be the concept of a foreign man of black skin being more or less well received in a petty medieval court?
And a second question, more related to contemporary views on the middle ages: often, the middle ages are a "funland" (movies, games, etc) to where people of color are not invited to. I'm not saying it's racist or anything, but it's funny how RPG settings or Game of Thrones etc always link pseudo-feudal societies to white skin, with any dark skinned characters being foreigners (of course historical Europeans had white skin, but the weird is conflating feudal structures with it). Seems to me Black Knight was kind of an attempt to include black people into the sense of belonging to the "universal history" which includes the Middle Ages. As Americans, specially as scholars deconstructing the "dark ages", how do you view the place the Middle Ages have the sense of identity of Westerners, specially now when a great part of Westerners are non-white?
Thanks for doing this guys, very interesting to read through the answers. Will be sure to pick-up your book over the next couple of weeks!
My own research/specialty when I was still studying was very much on the 'outer reaches' of Europe, ie. Ireland lol. But of course as anyone who has ever heard the 'land of saints and scholars' myth is vaguely aware, there was actually a lot of cultural and intellectual activity in Ireland and of course Ireland was actually very much connected to the intellectual world of early medieval europe. It can be amusing how people attempt to square this 'saints and scholars' myth with the myth of the Dark Ages in general, ie. absolute drek like 'How the Irish Saved Civilization'.
There are numerous examples of influential Irish monks and scholars all across Carolingian Europe. Does your book touch on these figures at all? A particular fascination of mine is the work of John Scottus Eriugena, but granted it might be hard to fit such relatively obscure figures as him into a broader, digestible history.
I absolutely hate hate hate the myth of the Dark Ages and connected to that, the idea that the Roman Empire simply went 'poof' in 476AD and that was that. So any more ammunition your book can provide will be more than welcome :)