It's been decades since I took Medieval History in college, so I thought The Modern Scholar's The Medieval World I: Kingdoms, Empires, and War by Professor Thomas F. Madden might be a nice memory refresher. One of the first things I noticed was that the accompanying booklet has more color photos than the other Modern Scholar series I've checked out: paintings, illuminations, illustrations, even a bust and a building. I like that!

In my undergrad days (1972-1976), the Middle Ages were still pretty much considered the Dark Ages. Professor Madden explains that nickname in wrong. He starts out with the reforms of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, on to Constantine and the founding of Constantinople, then Rome's decline.

I had to chuckle at the title of the second lecture: 'The Empire Strikes Back: Justinian I and the reconquest of the West'.

The other twelve lectures are:

3. The rise of Islam
4. The Popes (as masters of Rome)
5. The Carolingians
6. The Muslim, Magyar, and Viking invasions of Europe
7. The 11th Century Cluniac reformation of the Roman Catholic Church
8. The Investiture Controversy (billed as the 'Clash of Church and State')
9. The Crusades (not what scholars used to think they were)
10. England and France as growing kingdoms
11. The Rise and Fall of the Papal Monarchy
12. The Great [Occidental] Schism (Roman versus Avignon Popes)
13. The Hundred Years War
14. The Fall of Constantinople

I happen to be Catholic, and these lectures reminded me that my college class taught me more about Church history than I ever learned in CCD [Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, basically Catholic Sunday School for students who went to public schools instead of parochial ones]. I'd forgotten a lot.

Professor Madden points out how Middle Ages Europeans thought. Their beliefs can seem quite strange to modern minds. If you don't pay attention to those parts, quite a bit of what happened during that period won't make sense. (Feel free to shake your head over all those deaths resulting from the French not wanting King Edward III of England to be their king too, even if he was King Philip IV's grandson, and Edward III refusing to take their 'no!' for an answer.)

The Fall of Constantinople I knew about only vaguely. Those Turkish cannons sound frightening! (Thanks to my parents' records I couldn't listen to the lecture without hearing The Four Lads' 1953 hit: 'Istanbul (not Constantinople)'. We learn how the news affected Europe, then the booklet moves on to suggested further reading.

Of course this is only an overview, but it's nice to have the main stories of the Middle Ages in 14 lectures. ( )