A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance-Portrait of an Age

Drawing from a variety of sources, this beautifully illustrated new color edition of the New York Times bestseller brings readers more intimately into the medieval world than ever before. From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with an extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of a rebirth that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, and artists-and that eventually enabled the West to emerge into the brilliance of the Renaissance. For Manchester, no man better epitomized this new quest for knowledge than Magellan, the first person to circumnavigate the world, whose inspiring story he vividly relates, along with the stories of the medieval men and women among the laity and at the highest Christian altars who influenced and changed the course of history.