Medical explanations of human character and conduct are by themselves (as William James pointed out) usually “destructive and insufficient.” It seems highly possible that Joan of Arc suffered from tuberculosis. But this analysis of her medical background, write John and Isobel-Ann Butterfield, does nothing to lessen our admiration for her heroic and inspired life.
John Andrew Boyle describes how, for many years during the mid-thirteenth century, Mongol forces which had already driven deep into Central Europe, threatened to over-run and obliterate the Christian civilization of the West.
T.H. McGuffe describes how the mounted lancer and the pike-bearing infantryman have appeared on European battlefields from classical times until within living memory.
Dorothy Margaret Stuart introduces a grandee at the court of Edward IV, a warrior both on land and sea, and the first patron of English printing; Earl Rivers, who met his death in the sinister Castle of Pontefract at the orders of Richard III.
Evelyn Hardy visits an English architectural monument of elaborate richness.
Dorothy Margaret Stuart gives the political background of the career of Joan of Arc, when France was enfeebled by foreign invasion and civil strife, and the Duchy of Burgundy had almost achieved the status of an independent European power.
One of the most discreditable episodes in the history of the West is the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, writes Donald Nicol, when the leaders of the Fourth Crusade inflicted a savage punishment upon their Eastern brethren.
John B. Morrall describes how worldly learning and a reverence for Christian tradition were combined in the character of “one of the best of the Renaissance Popes.”
To most modern readers little more than a resounding name, the Kingmaker is here described by Paul Kendall as an “early exemplar of that Western European energy” which was presently to transform the civilized world.
K.G. Tregonning traces the path of Mongol conquest to a lesser studied destination - the ancient kingdoms of the Indo-Chinese and Malayan peninsulas.
