The Gift of Orest. A history of post-Roman Europe 526-1535

This book is a provocation. It consistently bids farewell to epochal thinking – in this specific case, it buries the “Middle Ages”. In place of this long anachronistic coinage for 1000 years of history, which can be labeled as an epochal portion and placed in the bookcase with peace of mind, there is a new reflection on a dynamic phase of Latin Europe. This has far more to do with the emergence of contemporary civil societies than the inventors of the epoch model imagined.

Since the 18th century, the idea of an “ancient” Roman civilization and its intellectual “rebirth” 1000 years after its “downfall” has invited the historical imagination to identify with it and stamped the period in between as the “Middle Ages” – a strange concept that is nevertheless still powerful today. In his richly illustrated book, Bernhard Jussen makes it clear how little this way of interpreting the past can explain today and how much it actually blocks the need for current explanations. In seven large chapters, he succeeds in providing a fact-rich, fresh, well-told introduction to a revision of the history of Latin Europe.