Why do historians disagree with William Manchester in his book A World Lit Only By Fire?

Question

details and examples please thanks! :)))

Answer 1

I suppose the greatest concern of historians with this book is that Manchester was a decent WRITER. This book is engaging and entertaining. As a result, many have read it, been assigned it for classes, etc., and come away convinced of the view of the Middle Ages he presents.

The problem is this -- first in general terms:
1) the book is riddled with errors (easily correctable ones)

2) he does NO original work, and bases his writing on secondary sources, going back to scholarship that is several generations old, and includes much that has been debunked or dismissed by historians for decades, based on a closer look at sources (new and old)

3) he readily includes every salacious rumor he can find to use against church leaders, etc., no matter how irrelevant, or questionable the source (no question that some of these sorts of things happened, but many are dubious, and more than that, such a litany of them SERIOUSLY skews the portrait

4) most basically, his view of the Middle Ages (clearly conveyed in his title) as a "dark, benighted" time, when no progress took place, indeed where the Church actively OPPOSED progress (esp. in the scientific arena) is now regarded as UTTERLY untenable. . .

There were, on the contrary MANY advances in many fields, including technology (esp in agriculture and navigation), banking, scholarship (founding of the university system & scholasticism, which set the stage for much academic and scientific progress), government AND 'culture' (art, music, architecture).

There were even special periods of great advancement, esp. what has now been dubbed the "Twelfth Century Renaissance", a flowering of learning arguably of MUCH more long-term significance than the Italian Renaissance (indeed laying foundations for the latter!) To this we might add, for starters, the Carolingian Renaissance [8th-9th centuries]

In short, this book is a horribly biased, SHODDY piece of "scholarship" (which the author practically admits when he tells us that one of the world's foremost authorities challenged him "in virtually every passage of the work"!!)


To be more specific, here are examples of errors Manchester makes or repeats:

1) Perpetuates the "flat earth" myth
To begin with one of the most important -- since a large part of the work focuses on Magellan, one would expect he'd at least understand the circumstances and beliefs surrounding that explorer. BUT what he does he portray Magellan as "proving that the earth was round". Minor problem -- every educated person had known this FOR ABOUT TWO MILLENNIA!! The idea that churchmen thought the earth flat until Magellan (or, in most tellings, Columbus) proved otherwise is an absolute MYTH.

In fact, those churchmen had a fairly accurate estimate of the size of the earth (unlike Columbus's, which was much to small), and questioned whether such a long trip was feasible and safe enough to invest the money in! (Indeed it WAS very difficult... and before 1450 there was NO technology that could have accomplished it.)

Now if he cannot get this central point correct, why trust the rest?? But I'll add a few...

2) He claims that Copernicus was burned at the stake by the Inquisition. Sorry, no, Copernicus died IN HIS BED of natural causes, with his student nearby. (And though there were questions raised about his work decades later, he did NOT die opposed by the Church.)

3) He repeats a preposterous caricature of John Calvin's bloodthirsty ways. (Anyone who has taken a look at Calvin, his rather LIMITED political influence in Geneva, and esp how the ONE mark against him -- the Servetus Affair -- actually worked out, can only shake their head.)

4) His date for Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" is off by a century

5) He often falls into clear logical fallacies. For example, he compares the quality of life of medieval peasants to that of Renaissance LORDS in order and concludes that society as a whole became richer. (There WAS increase in wealth -- over several centuries, and thanks to such things as advances in banking which began CENTURIES before the Italian Renaissance.)

6) He refers to the common people 'not having last names' . But, in fact, they began to take regular surnames only a short while after nobles did

7) Claims that "In the Medieval mind, there was also no awareness of time." What sort ot??

8) Declares that subsistence farmers forced to eat spoiled meat can only tolerate it by adding spices. (Problem -- spices were EXTREMELY expensive, so how and why would these poor folks do so?!)

Answer 2

I think this is literally one of the best books I have ever read. It would help to know what areas of disagreement you mean, but even Manchester had to make assumptions about daily life in the Dark Ages. The major characteristics of the medieval mind and daily medieval life is one area of criticism that ignores the fact that Manchester acknowledged he had to work from deductive assumptions because no one wrote about what a "ordinary" (i.e. not noble) European's life was like in these isolated villages. A second assumption Manchester had to make was what the hidden agendas of the Roman Catholic Church. I believe his specific details of church corruption led to many of the attacks on Manchester. Remember-Martin Luther never intended to form a new church--he wanted to reform the Catholic church. However, when the Pope began giving indulgences for sins that had not even been committed yet, the reform movement got away from Luther. Just imagine going to your priest and saying, "I want to buy an indulgence for adultery next Friday!" Manchester died with some some type of dementia and was not able to defend himself. The sad part is he knew he was losing his memory and the distress hastened his death. So, im summary, the Church has bashed him for telling the truth about the corruption of the times and historians have bashed him for making educated guesses about the lives of ordinary people that no one cared enough to document at the time.

Answer 3

You know you cannot set heavy things on fire like the ACT. It'll give you a headache...