| Sumario: | That violence reigned supreme, that the powerful exercised a pitiless domination over the weak, that justice was cruel and expeditious, that a fanatical religion has ruled the lives of men, barely tempered by them. the most extravagant superstitions, that there was only a very rough knowledge in the fields of science, medicine, or hygiene, that women were despised and ignored all that was foreign to them. the borders of the West, for the majority of us, there is no doubt about it: the Middle Ages, an interminable parenthesis between the achievements of Antiquity and the wonders of the Renaissance, is the obligatory point of reference when one wants to to denigrate the dark times we have escaped to finally reach modernity. So many received ideas that the greatest French specialists of the question strongly contest. Allowing us, finally, to meet this pivotal period in the history of Europe: the moment when it was formed, with forms of political and social life that have endured to this day.--Translation of page 4 of cover by Vendémiaire.
|
|---|
