European History Essay

Question: Examine and analyze Manchester’s point of view on “medieval man”. What is missing in the lives of medieval people? What is Manchester’s assessment of this? Why does the Renaissance spring from medieval times, according to Manchester? Is this a viable assessment of the times, in your opinion? Why or why not?

In the book A World Lit Only by Fire, William Manchester dealt with the lives of medieval man and the causes of Renaissance. Although medieval man had more ego than we do,unlike us, they did not enjoy the same sense of individualism and freedom of thought; the core factor that determined all the causes of Renaissance was economic development of western Europe in late medieval ages. Manchester believes that medieval man totally lacked ego, which could be seen from the anonymity of architects and builders of great cathedrals, the way peasants named themselves, and their insensitivity of privacy. From the way he describes them, I can see he thinks they are foolish, ignorant, blind, and their society stagnant. He thinks this happened because they were taught that everything was about god, not human, because they had few access to the larger world, and because there was few innovation in medieval times. However, in my opinion, medieval man did not lack ego, only that their ego was not recognized by authority. In a way, they had more ego than we do, because all they ever cared about in all their life was their own welfare, or that of their small community. Unlike us, they were totally uninterested in great events in the outside world, and the only place most of them had spent their whole lives in was their small village. They only minded their own business, unlike in modern age, when even the most ordinary people had a sense of their mother country and were told to devote to it. The medieval man did not care who was the king or whether his realm was strong, unless that would influence their own life. Their family or village was all about their