[.ca] The Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages (ISBN 0486414361)

This book will live for ever:
When I bought this book, I had some misgivings, because it was dated 1927, and I am always nervous about reading old books in unfamiliar areas - there might be some important discovery that completely changes the picture, and of which they are unaware. But I felt I needed it, because it covered a grievous gap in my own knowledge of one of my subjects - the state of culture, and its social organization, in the middle ages. And by the time I was turning the first page, I knew I'd struck gold. Gold? Diamonds! This is the sort of book that never grows old, because it is built on a most extraordinary knowledge of the relevant material - again and again, she quotes unpublished manuscripts and material in obscure German and Italian publications - joined with immense sympathy for people. a broad vision that sweeps over several centuries, an eye for the significant detail, and a delicious and humane sense of humour; it is a classic like Gibbon. I wonder whether GK Chesterton ever read it? He would have loved it. It is a wonderfully insightful picture of the intellectual life of the West over seven centuries (400-1200 AD), drawn entirely from contemporary documents. Therefore the view it presents may be modified by further discoveries, but cannot be disproved or contradicted, because it grows from the soil of real people's experience. I can't praise it enough.