Medieval European history is a vast and ever-growing field, so creating a top ten list is no easy task. To keep the work manageable, what follows is a “top ten” of a very particular type of book.
For starters, I’m not including popular textbooks or syntheses. of course there are loads of these, and many are absolutely brilliant (and have been hugely influential); but listing them would be an entirely different exercise. so all of these books are research monographs, presenting original arguments based on the author’s own engagement with the sources.
You are reading: Best books on medieval history
but they are not your typical academic monographs: they are books that I think students of one level (and others) can enjoy and benefit from, and that do not require much prior knowledge. I also only include books available in English, which rules out a large number of works.
Finally, this is a very personal list: these are books that, for different reasons and at different times, have been important to my way of thinking about medieval European history. all medieval historians would no doubt come up with a different set, but these are books that have changed my mind. maybe they could change yours…
1. janet abu-lughod, before european hegemony: the world system, ad 1250-1350 (1991) the book traces the trade networks promoted by the mongol empire that spans eurasia and flourished until the black plague hit. It may not be the easiest read on this list, but this remarkably bold book was years ahead of its time in showing how global connections mattered, centuries before industrialization.
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2. robert bartlett, the hanged man. a story of miracle, memory and colonialism in the middle ages (2004) a brilliant piece of detective work, based on the accounts of the hanging of a welshman named william de cragh around 1307. this fabulous and evocative piece of microhistory highlights the interconnections between politics, society, and religion in medieval society, and does so in elegant prose.
3. heinrich fichtenau, living in the 10th century. Mentalities and Social Orders (1991) This is actually a translation of a book originally written in German by the Austrian author in 1984. The translation lightened the apparatus, but kept the focus fresh. The book is organized thematically, drawing on contemporary classifications and ways of thinking in perhaps the most forgotten century of medieval Europe. It’s guaranteed to make you think differently about not only the 10th century, but the Middle Ages in general.
4. john hatcher, the black death: an intimate history (2008) when the eminent economic and social historian john hatcher retired, he set about writing a book on the black death that he had long desired, one in which he drew in imagination to complete his own unrivaled knowledge of the documentary record of the impact of the black plague on medieval england. It is a superb book that combines an empirical mastery of the sources with an admirable historical sensitivity to explain what it might have been like to live in a Suffolk town at a momentous and terrifying time.
5. rodney hilton, freed bond men. Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (1977) A classic and still unsurpassed study of the famous Peasants’ Revolt, inspired by the 1960s protests that affected many UK universities, including the birmingham hilton. It’s no wonder it was reissued in 2003. There have been many studies on the subject since then, but this overview is definitely worth a read.
6. maureen miller, dressing the clergy. Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, 800-1200 (2014) In a wonderfully produced, richly illustrated, and superbly original scholarly work, Miller relies on an unusual kind of evidence: the change of clothes of priests and clerics, to illuminate (and analyze) the enormous changes in Western European culture, from the soberly dressed origins of Christianity to the jewel-laden papal monarchy. is a medieval history book that I found hard to put down.
7. Rhode Island. moore, war against heresy. Faith and Power in Medieval Europe (2012) With this book, Moore wanted to write something that could appear in airport bookstores, doing away with the Dan Brown-style nonsense normally found there. It is a book about how a campaign to eradicate an ironically perceived social problem ended up generating it (a process whose modern parallels Moore does not shy away from). a future classic.
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8. eileen power, medieval people (1924) a book published more than 90 years ago in a list made in 2017? but Medieval People of Power, offering potted biographies of six ordinary medieval individuals (give or take), is still fresh; and it is no coincidence that it has been translated into French in recent years. I recently played one of his chapters to my students (on a Frankish peasant named Bodo), and in an end-of-year survey, they described it as one of the most memorable things they had read in college. find out for yourself (it’s so old it’s out of copyright!).
9. Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (1999) Modern society is generally uncomfortable with death. But in this wonderful book, originally published in French in 1994, Schmitt shows how people in medieval society thought about things differently, and how ghosts were essentially a problem of people who refused to be forgotten. a modern must-read in cultural history.
10. Christopher Tyerman, How to Plan a Crusade. Reason and Religious Warfare in the High Middle Ages (2015) It’s tempting to see the Middle Ages as irrational, and there’s a long tradition of doing just that. But in this book, Tyerman shows how reason can often be harnessed to ends that seem profoundly unreasonable to us, in this case holy war. behind all the ideology there was, in fact, a lot of very practical organization: and tracing this shows a very different side of the period.
charles west lectures on early medieval history at sheffield’s history department. you can follow him on twitter @pseudo_isidore.
image: medieval text written by alexander nequam, 1157-1217, abbot of cirencester, donated to jesus college [via flickr]
Our “best books” feature asks a historian to recommend the most important books to read to get you started in your subject area. We think these occasional posts will be of interest to a wide variety of readers, but they may be especially useful to middle school teachers and students looking for the logical place to start on a new topic. all these blogs will appear here, as they are published.
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