Print

Preface People invent fictions about every period of history as they reshape the past to their own liking. Perhaps no other historical era has been mis- understood and reinvented as much as the Middle Ages. In the millen- nium between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and the first Atlantic voyage of Columbus in 1492 (or you can choose other events around 500 and 1500 CE), you can find a vast range of cultures, ideas, individuals, or events that have been used to represent the essence of the “Middle Ages.” Attila the Hun, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, or Dante: each of these people has been used to define “medieval.” Likewise, barbarians or knights in shining armor, filthy hovels or towering cathedrals, brutal tyrants or parliamentary governments, and the violence of the Crusades or the pacifism of St. Francis can legitimately evoke key aspects of the Middle Ages. The historical problems begin and fictions are created when authors, teachers, journalists, and scholars choose just one of these medi- eval images to represent the entire medieval millennium. This book introduces eleven fictions about the European Middle Ages that have developed and persisted throughout the last two centuries or more. Others could have been included, especially if we expanded “medi- eval” to include the premodern Islamic world and other cultures contem- porary with medieval Europe. Entire books have been written to challenge errors about the history of the Crusades or the place of women in the Mid- dle Ages, issues that are covered here in specific cases. The eleven fictions were chosen to cover the entire Middle Ages and to touch on issues big and small, from specific myths about individuals to broad fictions about the very meaning of “medieval.” Most of these fictions are extensions of