The beauty and levity that Perry and Gabriele have captured in this book are what I think will
help it to become a standard text for general audiences for years to come....The Bright Ages is
a rare thing?a nuanced historical work that almost anyone can enjoy reading.??Slate
Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating. ?The Boston Globe A lively and magisterial popular
history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages showing the beauty and
communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality?a brilliant reflection of humanity
itself. 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. The Bright Ages contains an 8-page color insert.
