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Historical Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths by Regine Pernoud $12.95 / Ignatius Press / 2000 When in 1977 a television research assistant called medieval historian Regine Pernoud to request transparencies that represented "the Middle Ages in general: slaughter, massacres, scenes of violence, famines, epidemics", Pernoud rose to the occasion by writing Pour en finir avec le Moyen Age, a book that enthusiastically dissected centuries of ignorance and neglect. Those Terrible Middle Ages is not so much a recitation of facts as it is an eloquent meditation on the achievements of the era and the root causes for the continued perception that the millennium following the fall of the Roman Empire was a time of intellectual darkness and brutality. As Pernoud points out, it was, in fact, the Renaissance that set western civilization on a destructive course of colonialism, deprivation of women's rights, and religious intolerance through a strict adherence to "classical" thinking, a philosophy that extended to the obliteration of anything considered "Gothic." Over time, medieval contributions would not only be overshadowed by the Renaissance but would also be relegated to the backwaters of history, giving rise to the shadowy myths that persist to this day. Although Anne Englund Nash provides an excellent translation from the original French, Pernoud's observations are sometimes hampered by the fact that much has changed over the past quarter century. Her stance on the dearth of medieval research, for example, no longer holds true, and her decision to limit the scope of her discussion excludes any treatment of technology, medicine, and science. But as these topics can be found elsewhere, such shortcomings should not deter the reader from considering this significant work. —Charles Matza

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