Renaissance, Humanism, and the Interpretation of the Twelfth CenturyThe Twelfth Century Renaissance. Christopher BrookeTwelfth-Century Europe: An Interpretive Essay. Sidney R. PackardThe Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200. Colin MorrisLove in Twelfth Century France. John C. Moore

Abstract

The temptation to characterize centuries under handy rubrics is not peculiar to historians of any age. Nonetheless, there are times when the yielding seems decidedly more prevalent than the resisting. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century by Charles Homer Haskins, first published in 1927, is a good example of a genre surprisingly popular in the early twentieth century that has continued to maintain its vitality down to the present (a paperback edition of the work is still in print). Aside from its popularity, one might well ask how much difference there is between Haskins's book and the now unread work of James J. Walsh, The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries (1907). The similarities are striking, not only in the naively optimistic attitude each author took toward his subject, but also in the method employed, that of the endless accumulation of every seemingly relevant detail. Haskins, of course, was a Harvard professor, the dean of American medievalists, and a man who wrote several far better books (notably Studies in the History of Medieval Science), while Walsh was a Catholic publicist of more reduced academic standing whose deficiencies are all too evident in his most noted book. And then