“Atlas of Medieval Europe”, edited by Angus Mackay with David Ditchburn

 

288 pages, Routledge, ISBN-13: 978-0415019231

The Atlas of Medieval Europe is…an atlas of medieval Europe. Okay, I’ll elaborate. It is also a terrific historical resource that contains maps and explanations, divided into a number of sections: Early Medieval (from the fall of the western Roman empire to 1100); Central Middle Ages (1100 to 1300) and Late Middle Ages (1300 to 1500), with each section further broken down into Politics, Religion, Government, Society and Economy, and Culture. I counted thirty-seven different scholars (I think) who contributed to the work, so it is rather uneven in its textual presentation and illustration, but then again, this is an atlas, after all, so I found the written word involved with the maps to be the least of my concerns. While straight-up political maps are to be found – my, how the boundaries of nations can change over a couple of centuries; hell, whole nations can disappear over a couple of centuries, too – there are maps showing the most interesting and specific of trends, like the spread of anti-Semitism say, or the raising of provisions for war in England. But therein is a cause for concern, as the maps, too, are of widely varying quality; some are very well done and readable, but others are essentially impossible to interpret, either because of large amounts of detail in a small space, or because of lack of identifiable references, such as rivers and cities with names that can be recognized by the non-specialist modern reader. I have found that other works on this subject are usually very brief in their descriptions and contain a grade school report level of information; The Atlas of Medieval Europe, in contrast, is a comprehensive, adult reference that, despite a few shortcomings, does justice to the complexity of the subject matter.