Started on: Dec 16th, 2025
Finished on: Mar 18th, 2025
Time to read: 39 hours, 54 minutes
“Medieval” and “Dark ages” has become two faces of the same coin in popular culture, so much so that we almost always use it as a synonym for decadence. Like all sweeping generalizations, though, seldom is this accurate. Mr. Durant showcases how much depth and variability a thousand years can have. Taking up the Volume IV of The History of Civilization series, you are now quite familiar with the quirks and tropes of Mr. Durant. He frequently speaks in superlatives and uses “barbaric” for foreign powers so much that you feel repulsed. But now you know that these are distractions to an otherwise wonderful scholarship.
There are some peripheral topics in the book which are less than satisfactory - the frequent wars and discussions of numerous rulers being one of them, but the central theme of the book, the three religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam, is dealt with a scholarly hand. Amongst the three, Christianity is given the most importance and discussed most at length, but I’m not complaining. It is a rather interesting deep-dive, where you experience the world’s most dominant religion from its birth to its triumph and barbarity. I have an “Oriental” mind, as Mr. Durant would put it, so I loved walking through the century with a Euro-centric, Christianity-obsessed perspective.
The book is long and becomes exhausting to read at times, especially when reading about the kings who are footnotes in the ocean of history. It took me ~40 hours over a period of three months to complete the book. But as with his other books in the series, you never regret having taken the pain to go through the journey. I’m looking forward to read the next one.