Writer Sharan Newman has a nice takedown of Thomas Cahill’s latest, in Christian Century:

Mysteries of the Middle Ages is part of Cahill’s "hinges of history" series, which began with How the Irish Saved Civilization. His laudable goal is to demonstrate how times and places denigrated by recent historians have contributed a great deal to the formation of the modern world. Now, he has decided, it’s time to show that the Middle Ages weren’t a backward, dark era in history. The problem is that Cahill does not seem to know anything about the Middle Ages.

Well! That would be a problem, wouldn’t it?

The volume continues with minibiographies of notable people of the times, beginning with the 12th century, before which were the Dark Ages. He gives the most attention to Hildegard of Bingen, Heloise and Abelard, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. The stories are interspersed with confused discussions of the "courts of love," the Crusades, why southern Europe is better than the north, what’s wrong with Islam and how Roger Bacon was really quite modern except for his "medieval" belief in astrology. Cahill ends with Dante and Giotto, whom he likes, but with reservations.

All of these are interesting subjects, but all of them have been written about elsewhere in a more complete and coherent manner. Cahill puts none of them into the context of the times. It’s as though the accomplished people he writes about were isolated individuals fighting against the strictures of the backward society they lived in. I am left with the simple impression that Hildegard was a soul sister of Bessie Smith and that Eleanor was a sex addict who had numerous affairs. Cahill dismisses the work of Aquinas as "irrelevant" and asserts that Dante is important because he was brave enough to criticize popes. Cahill fails to discuss the dynamic society these individuals lived in and to show how they fit into it.

Throughout the book are comments that show Cahill’s contempt for the Middle Ages and the people of that time. Medieval people had a "superstitious reverence for the stars" and a "pagan nightmare of a world of shapeshifters." Religious controversies came to violence because of "slogan-reciting mobs of simple-minded monks." This shouldn’t be surprising since Cahill seems to believe that monasteries were created in order to keep wandering ruffians under control.

Cahill portrays Hildegard as a poor, repressed woman forced into a convent as a child. Her work, though creative, is "page after page of stultifying orthodoxy . . . not far distant from pious drivel." Her medical writing is "as useless to us as the rest of medieval medicine." What he admires most about her is the many letters she wrote to religious leaders, nagging them to shape up. This is a key to what I suspect is Cahill’s real theme.

I say "suspect" because this book is such a muddle that any points Cahill might have wanted to make are lost. His lack of understanding of the period is one drawback. He is supposed to know Latin well enough to read material in its original language, but I don’t see any sign of depth of research. His pronouncements about the period are not footnoted, so his sources cannot be checked. He does have a system of side notes, but these only give more of his opinions or direct readers to his other books.

In the concluding chapter Cahill does not gather up the scattered swatches of information in the preceding pages. Instead he launches into a diatribe against present Catholic Church officials’ failure to adequately deal with the problem of pederastic priests. My conclusion is that he chose as subjects people he saw as rebels against church complacency. To him Hildegard, Abelard, St. Francis and Dante are lay individuals who fought against ecclesiastical corruption. The book is a call to lay Catholics of today to follow their example and clean up the church.

She concludes with some suggestions for further and better reading:

Strong of Body, Brave and Noble: Chivalry and Society in Medieval France

Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians

..and others. She doesn’t mention Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths – so I will!