This is another book that is easy to like. In the past couple of years, my research interests have veered from the nineteenth century back in time to the eighteenth, and some of the history, philosophy, theology and social aspects of this century can only be explained in reference with the Medieval period that preceded it. I have stumbled into those darker ages on occasion, but not in a manner that explains annotations that mention these topics as if readers should be familiar with them. So, a historical dictionary that summaries the most convoluted words from Medieval philosophy and theology is something I am likely to need in the near future. This encyclopedia lists “philosophers and theologians from the medieval Arabian, Jewish, and Christian worlds” and “authors such as Abumashar, Saadiah Gaon and Alcuin from the eighth century and follows the intellectual developments of the three traditions up to the fifteenth-century Ibn Khaldun, Hasdai Crescas and Marsilio Ficino.” I definitely need this book because while the religions sound familiar, I have never read about any of these writers before. “The spiritual journeys presuppose earlier human sources, such as the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Porphyry and various Stoic authors, the revealed teachings of the Jewish Law, the Koran and the Christian Bible.” These older teachings, in contrast, I have read a good deal about, so I was right to request this dictionary, as I (and perhaps most members of the public) have a blind-spot for what exactly happened in Medieval times other than Inquisitions or other forms of torture and deprivation. “The Fathers of the Church, such as St. Augustine and Gregory the Great, provided examples of theology in their attempts to reconcile revealed truth and man’s philosophical knowledge and deserve attention as pre-medieval contributors to medieval intellectual life. Avicenna and Averroes, Maimonides and Gersonides, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, stand out in the three traditions as special medieval contributors who deserve more attention.”
When I came across the “Chronology”, I, frankly, did not even know the approximate timeframe the Medieval period covered. The first event recorded is 500: “Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite” and his writings; I doubted he could have belonged to Medieval times, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and indeed he does, as apparently this period covers a full millennium between 500 and 1600. The printing press was invented close to the end of this period, and colonialism introduced many shared ideas to the West at the end of this stretch, opening a wealth of historical sources after 1600, so perhaps historians isolate this millennium because of the relative lack of information we have regarding what happened in this span on a per-decade average. In contrast, there were pharaohs and emperors in Athens and Egypt that left more history, archeological remains and authored texts in a few vibrant decades in the prior millennia. Other events in the “Chronology” that are curious is the birth of Muhammad in 570, and Muslims conquered Spain in 711. Most of the notes are about rulers dying, and the publications of major texts. Dante’s books are not listed, but the date of his death is. I have read Dante’s and Machiavelli’s books closely, so I learned that I am more familiar with key Medieval writers than I might have imagined. I would have mentioned these two writers in the summary of this book to clarify the better-known figures it covers, but perhaps specialists in this area are less impressed with this pair. Given the intricacies of the religions and cultural changes across this millennium, I think this book could benefit from a longer introduction in future editions; the “Introduction” also jumps around between only a few periods (scholastic theology in the twelfth century) and a few concepts such as marriage. This light coverage is made up for in the lengthy explanations of some of the terms across the rest of the book. For example, while defining “Augustinianism”, the author offers a brief biography of St. Augustine as one of the “most influential… Fathers of the Church”, before explaining how his followers branched out and the term came to stand for ideas that were loosely associated with the original Father’s teachings (71-2). The same detached and objective attention appears to be given to all of the covered religions, including a detailed analysis of “Exegesis” or “textual interpretation” of the “revelation” text out of the biblical collection, with explanations on its relation to Cabalistic mysticism the Talmud, and various teachers of these branches (127-32). I have not read anything from or about the Talmud for a couple of decades and glancing through these materials makes me want to return to this study just to understand better what Stephen F. Brown and Juan Carlos Flores are referring to in this complex summary.
Anybody who frequently jokes that something is “medieval” or from the “Dark Ages” should have a book like this on their shelf to check if the comparison is accurate. Additionally, anybody who refers to theological or philosophical ideas from these medieval scholars in either casual conversations or research, should check if what they have been told about these teachings is indeed accurate. While reading all of the books of the Torah might be time-prohibitive, reviewing a dictionary entry in a book like this one is an approachable and achievable reference point.