A review by siria
The Devil's Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past by Amy S. Kaufman
3.0
A slim volume that will provide undergraduate students with a useful introduction to the concept of medievalism, and how ideas about the Middle Ages have been politicised, fetishised, and mythologised over many centuries.
However, the brevity and relative simplicity that makes it useful in the college classroom also means that The Devil’s Historians should only ever be used as an introductory starting point, not as the last word—many topics are presented in a simplified manner, and perhaps sometimes overly simplified. There are also times when Kaufman and Sturtevant gild the lily a bit too much in their attempt to demolish the popular preconception of Middle Ages as a brutish inversion of an enlightened modernity. I’m sympathetic to that, though, knowing how hard I’ve had to work at times to convince students that medieval women could have any agency at all. Just getting people to understand that, say, Hildegard of Bingen was a highly influential intellectual force can be enough of a lift without trying to get into the nuances of how she was also a quite conservative thinker in many ways. (See, for instance, some of the statements made by other reviewers on this site who critique Kaufman and Sturtevant based on their own misconceptions about the Middle Ages.)
There are also some uncritical repetitions of some things that are dubiously historical (e.g. I know a number of Islamic historians who get frustrated by the characterisation of al-Qarawiyyin as a 9th-century university (17); there’s a vague reference to what I presume has to be Boswell’s argument about adelphopoiia (24) as if it’s historical fact rather than a very contentious theory), some factual mistakes an editor should have caught (the former leader of the SNP is Alex Salmond, not Andy Salmon), and some really weird conflations (the framing at one point (122) makes it seem as if asexuality and celibacy are the same thing, which is incorrect.)
If you’re new to this topic, you will likely find some stuff in The Devil’s Historians that’s eye-opening and of interest. However, I’d make use of the notes/list of further reading provided to go further rather than stopping here.
However, the brevity and relative simplicity that makes it useful in the college classroom also means that The Devil’s Historians should only ever be used as an introductory starting point, not as the last word—many topics are presented in a simplified manner, and perhaps sometimes overly simplified. There are also times when Kaufman and Sturtevant gild the lily a bit too much in their attempt to demolish the popular preconception of Middle Ages as a brutish inversion of an enlightened modernity. I’m sympathetic to that, though, knowing how hard I’ve had to work at times to convince students that medieval women could have any agency at all. Just getting people to understand that, say, Hildegard of Bingen was a highly influential intellectual force can be enough of a lift without trying to get into the nuances of how she was also a quite conservative thinker in many ways. (See, for instance, some of the statements made by other reviewers on this site who critique Kaufman and Sturtevant based on their own misconceptions about the Middle Ages.)
There are also some uncritical repetitions of some things that are dubiously historical (e.g. I know a number of Islamic historians who get frustrated by the characterisation of al-Qarawiyyin as a 9th-century university (17); there’s a vague reference to what I presume has to be Boswell’s argument about adelphopoiia (24) as if it’s historical fact rather than a very contentious theory), some factual mistakes an editor should have caught (the former leader of the SNP is Alex Salmond, not Andy Salmon), and some really weird conflations (the framing at one point (122) makes it seem as if asexuality and celibacy are the same thing, which is incorrect.)
If you’re new to this topic, you will likely find some stuff in The Devil’s Historians that’s eye-opening and of interest. However, I’d make use of the notes/list of further reading provided to go further rather than stopping here.