A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [148]
Those who audit the past rarely agree in their interpretations of it. But all writers, though they view history through discrepant prisms, deal with the same facts. In searching for them, the work to which I turned most often is recent: The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, the fifteenth edition of the greatest of encyclopedias. As the editors observe in their foreword, the excellence of such a work “rests on the authority of the scholars who wrote the articles.” Therefore they recruited the best. The major articles in the New Britannica often run to thirty thousand words or more, and their authors are celebrated. Among those whose contributions were of great value to me were Georges Paul Gusdorf of the University of Strasbourg on the history of humanistic scholarship, Roland H. Bainton of Yale on the Reformation, Martin Brett of the University of Auckland on the Middle Ages, the Reverend Ernest Gordon Rupp of Cambridge on Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, his Cambridge colleague Geoffrey R. Elton on King Henry VIII, Colin Alistair Ronan of the Royal Astronomical Society on Copernicus, Robert M. Kingdon of the University of Wisconsin on John Calvin; Michael de Ferdinandy of the University of Puerto Rico on Emperor Charles V, the Reverend Francis Xavier Murphy of Rome on Pope Alexander VI, and Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich of the University of Munich on Leonardo da Vinci.
Life on a Medieval Barony, which appeared in 1924, was the work of William Stearns Davis, then a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. Davis was writing about the thirteenth century, but his picture of a medieval community is valid in depicting the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I couldn’t have recreated medieval Europe without it. It has been a favorite of mine for fifty years.
Two handy reference books—provided they are used with caution—recount the historical past, day by day. They are The Timetables of History, by Bernard Grun, and The People’s Chronology, by James Trager.
MY ASSISTANT, Gloria Cone, has been tireless and loyal, and once more I am grateful for the assistance and support provided by the staff of Wesleyan University’s Olin Memorial Library, led by J. Robert Adams, Caleb T. Winchester Librarian. Joan Jurale, the head reference librarian—who stands at the very top of her demanding profession—was especially helpful. So were Edmund A. Rubacha, reference librarian; Susanne Javorski, art librarian; Erhard F. Konerding, documents librarian; and Steven Lebergott, head of interlibrary loans. Others on the Olin staff who were particularly helpful to me were Alan Nathanson, bibliographer, and Ann Frances Wakefield.
Finally, I again express my gratitude to Don Congdon, my literary agent and cherished friend for forty-three years; Roger Donald, my charming, indefatigable editor for seventeen years; and my superb copy editor, Peggy Leith Anderson, who in my long experience is truly without peer.
W.M.
Abram, A. English Life and Manners in the Later Middle Ages. London, 1913.
Allen, J. W. History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century. London, 1951.
Ammianus Marcellinus. Works. 2 vols. Trans. John C. Rolfe. Cambridge, Mass., 1935–36.
Armstrong, Edward. The Emperor Charles V. 2 vols. London, 1910.
Atkinson, J. Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism. Baltimore, 1968.
Bainton, R. H. Erasmus of Christendom. New York, 1969.
——. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. New York, 1950.
——. Hunted Heretic: The Life of Michael Servetus. Boston, 1953.
——. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. Boston, 1953.
——. The Travail of Religious Liberty. Philadelphia, 1951.
Bax, Belfort. German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages. London, 1894.
Beard, Charles. Martin Luther and the Reformation. London, 1896.
——. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Relation to Modern