POWERS AND THRONES

Jones returns with another sweeping history of the medieval world.

Having penned books about specific elements of his specialty (Crusaders, Magna Carta, The Templars), the author chronicles the 1,000-year story of the Middle Ages. His latest is a doorstop but never less than absorbing. In traditional histories, the Middle Ages extend from the fifth century to the 14th century. Jones extends it to the 1527 sack of Rome; he makes a solid case that the end did not occur until the Protestant Reformation shattered the Catholic Church. In the first 70 pages, the author describes the Roman Empire’s painful decline and abdication of the last Western emperor, whose successor referred to himself as the king of Italy but declared a symbolic obeisance to another Roman emperor, this one in Constantinople. Jones reminds readers that this “Eastern” emperor ruled the Balkans, today’s Turkey, and the Middle East and attempted, with temporary success, to win back lands in Western Europe and North Africa lost to “barbarians.” This Byzantine Empire considered itself Roman and, although vastly shrunken by Islamic conquests in the seventh century, remained in power for a millennium until the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453. The author delivers long essays on the early years of European nationhood, the rise of monasteries, knighthood, feudalism, and the Crusades. Less familiar is the catastrophic 13th-century Mongol invasion of Europe, followed by a commercial revolution, the rise of a merchant class, trade, scholarship, transoceanic exploration, and technology such as printing, which ultimately weakened the power of the Catholic Church by encouraging the rise of secular society. Despite a nod to contemporary interpretation (climate change and slavery receive much attention), this is traditional great-men-and-events history, but Jones writes a lively narrative, freely expressing doubts when it’s not clear what actually happened.

A fine account of a distant era that still echoes today.