The third of a projected six volumes of Dr. Warren H. Carroll's fully documented history of Christendom presents the glory of the High Middle Ages: the flowering of Christian civilization which produced saints and heroes, Popes, kings and queens, philosophers and architects whose achievements glow like beacons across the centuries. This was the age of a united and triumphant Christendom — the age of St. Bernard of Clairveaux, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, and St. Catherine of Siena; of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Gothic cathedrals; of the crusading kings Richard the Lion Hearted and St. Louis IX.

Dr. Carroll maintains that the age of the glory of Christendom extends into early modem times as well, encompassing the Christian scholarship and art of the Renaissance — with Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci — and the Age of Discovery launched by Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator and that it climaxed in the reign of Queen Isabel of Spain with the epochal voyage of Christopher Columbus to America.

As did earlier volumes in this sweeping series, The Glory of Christendom reflects an unabashedly Christian and Catholic view of history, centering on the Popes and their leadership of the Church as the common theme and connecting thread in the history of every Christian country — all of which are covered at least in significant part. Dr. Carroll holds that God and individual men and women, not impersonal social and economic “forces,” make history. The characters and actions of these history-makers, both good and evil, are vividly depicted as essential elements in the triumphs and tragedies of the following of Christ by the people of Christian Europe for over four hundred years (1100-1517).

Both a gripping, dramatic narrative and an indispensable work of reference for Christian History, this volume and the entire series of which it is a part belong in the library of every serious Catholic who desires to understand the work that Christ has done in the world through His Church and His faithful people.