A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester

A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester is a fascinating tale detailing the Middle Ages. It talks about the painful transition of the Medieval to the Renaissance.

A World Lit Only By Fire by William Manchester paints a clear portrait of an era that spans the Medieval & the Renaissance or the Middle Ages. William Manchester was able to craft a woven tale of a civilization undergoing a painful transition, teetering on the cusps in its quest for grandeur and the eventual realization of the dream. The Medieval allows us to savor exquisite tales of chivalrous knights at the same time exposed us to the grim barbaric laws during the times such as trial by ordeal.

The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages despite being depicted as a brutal period as embodied by the Medieval offered a number of redeeming qualities as attested by the heroic accomplishments of the people in the era paving the way for the great age of Renaissance. Thus proving, nobility knows no age. In Renaissance we saw the rise and huge concentration of talented poets, philosophers, painters, artists and reformers coupled with the most astonishing villains.

“History is not a random sequence of unrelated events. Everything affects and is affected by everything else.” Nowhere is this truer than in the Medieval. The book is set towards the end of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance roughly from 400 -1500 AD. Europe was plunged in utter chaos
towards the end of the Medieval Age up to the Renaissance. The Greco-Roman Empire though was highly prominent during that time.

Conflicts in the Medieval

Christianity was at the core of the conflict because of the wrongful interpretation of the Christian dogmas by people in authority such as popes and kings. The aristocracy was characterized as flawed, greedy, incestuous and other negative depictions. Most people particularly those belonging to the lower class were ignorant, very poor, unhealthy even savage.

Warlords attacked each other to increase their lands. And if that was not enough, execution was constantly implemented and death for those executed did not come swiftly. Burning at the stake, slash, beheadings and other gory and extreme measures were adopted. Martin Luther, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolus Copernicus, Sir Thomas Moore, Erasmus were some of the elite thinkers during the
time who all met untimely and gruesome death such as murder or assassinations.

Based largely on his research, Manchester was able to compile a detailed, information-rich book that plunges the readers into the medieval mind-set. The broad span of the Dark Ages to the dawn of the Renaissance which is the setting of the book provided a varied and riveting tale to the avid reader.

Manchester delineates the age when invisible spirits ruled the air, when tolerance was viewed as treachery and “a mafia of profane popes desecrated Christianity.' It does not only delve on the tough lives of ordinary people, Manchester, a Wesleyan professor of history, was able to depict the lives of great people as well whose voices still echoed to this day. Leonardo, Machiavelli, Lucrezia Borgia, Erasmus, Luther, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn fill the pages of the book.

He described Martin Luther as the “the most anal of theologians . . . this derived from the national character of the Reich'. Manchester (The Arms of Krupp) focuses attention to Magellan, who disproved Christendom's belief that Europe is the center of the universe. Manchester describes the
transition of the Medieval, "shackled in ignorance, disciplined by fear, and sheathed in superstition,"
into the Renaissance even with the famous villains such as Cesare Borgia and Torquemada.

Manchester’s depiction of the Middle Ages as a time when the strong and the shrewd prospered while the creative, the dreamer, the thinker and the unfortunate suffered, resonates even to this day.

Chapters in the Book

Instead of arranging the sequence of events by chronological order as historical books wont to do, Manchester takes the reader through subject by subject. It begins with the author’s explanation of the Medieval mind and how it came to be. Manchester addresses every probable facet of life during the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods.

Aside from recalling the defining moments of the time and portraying the lives of prominent people, he is able to vividly illustrate the main characteristics of the Medieval period starting from the way people dress, their eating habits, beliefs, and living conditions of all classes, ranging from peasantry to nobility.

The book ends with a section dedicated to the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, telling of his voyage to travel all over the globe and how his voyages effectively quelled the erroneous Catholic dogma that promoted Europe as the center of the universe. It ushered in an era of enlightenment, changed Western man’s view of the world and proved beyond doubt that the world is round. Consequently, these changes brought an end to the medieval era and its way of thinking.

A World Lit Only By Fire is comprehensive and presents history into a fantastic tale not boring narration which makes it all the more enjoyable. This book is suitable for people who take pleasure in learning about Europe particularly the Middle Ages.

Source:

A World Lit Only by Fire : The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age (Paperback) by William Manchester. Publisher: Little, Brown & Company. Pub. Date: June 1993. ISBN-13: 9780316545563