The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and The Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries

by J. Huizinga

Overview

"To the world when it was half a thousand years younger," Huizinga begins, "the outline of all things seemed more clearly marked than to us." Life seemed to consist in extremes—a fierce religious asceticism and an unrestrained licentiousness, ferocious judicial punishments and great popular waves of pity and mercy, the most horrible crimes and the most extravagant acts of saintliness—and everywhere a sea of tears, for men have never wept so unrestrainedly as in those centuries.
First published in 1924, this brilliant portrait of the life, thought, and art in France and the Netherlands in the 14th and 15th centuries is our most trenchant study of that crucial moment in history when the Middle Ages gave way to the great energy of the Renaissance. From an analysis of the dominating ideas of the times—those that held the medieval world together, supported its religion and informed its art and literature—emerges the style of a whole culture at the extreme limit of its development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781787201392
Publisher:	Normanby Press
Publication date:	10/21/2016
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	333
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Johan Huizinga (December 7, 1872 - February 1, 1945), was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history. He became professor of history at the University of Leiden in 1915, and taught there until the University was closed under the Nazi occupation. From then until his death in 1945, he was held in detention by the Nazis. He died in De Steeg in Gelderland, near Arnhem, just a few weeks before Nazi rule ended. Huizinga was the author of many books, four of which have been translated and are available in English: In the Shadow of Tomorrow; Homo Ludens, A Study of the Play Element in Culture; Erasmus of Rotterdam and The Waning of the Middle Ages.