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Beatrice's Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages Hardcover – July 13, 2023

by Mark Gregory Pegg (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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Mark Gregory Pegg's history of the Middle Ages opens and closes with martyrdom, the first that of a young Roman mother in a North African amphitheater in 203 and the second a French girl burned to death beside the Seine in 1431. Both Vibia Perpetua and Jeanne la Pucelle died for their Christian beliefs, yet that for which they willingly sacrificed their lives connects and separates them. Both were divinely inspired, but one believed her deity shared the universe with other gods, and the other knew that her Creator ruled heaven and earth. Between them, across the centuries, lives were shaped by the ebb and flow of the divine and the human. Here is the story of people struggling in life and in death to understand themselves and their relationship to God.

Beatrice's Last Smile interweaves vivid portraits of such individuals to offer a sweeping and immersive story. Some are of enduring renown ― Augustine, Muhammad, Charlemagne, Heloise ―and others are obscure. An Egyptian youth fighting demons in the desert as the first monk; a Briton becomes a holy man after enslavement in Ireland; an emperor in Constantinople watches as rioters torch the city; a old Syrian monk advises the English on sex; the soul of a Merovingian noble flies through the night sky to heaven; an Irish warrior surfs the waves like a dolphin as he flees the Vikings; a crusader's boots squelch with blood on the streets of Jerusalem; a troubadour sings of love; a Muslim lord expresses admiration of the Templars; a pope proclaims that Christendom encompasses all time and space; a barefoot Franciscan friar visits the Great Khan of the Mongols; a Parisian rabbi argues for the holiness of the Talmud; and a poet laments being alive amid the horror of the Black Death. Together, they take readers from the vastness of the Roman Empire to small communities between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, from the nomads of the Asian steppes to the triumphant Church of Latin Christendom.

Beatrice's Last Smile offers a pulsating history of the West: the passionate belief in the old gods that yields to a cosmos shaped by one; the transition from a penitential culture to a confessional one; the universal obsession with imitating Christ. The book is named for the moment in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy when his long-dead love, Beatrice, smiles one final time at Dante in paradise before turning away to look eternally upon the face of God.

Mark Gregory Pegg's epic narrative captures a millennium within that fleeting smile, in ways that modern readers will find illuminating and haunting.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    504 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    July 13, 2023
  5. Dimensions
    9.35 x 1.67 x 6.6 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0199766487
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0199766482
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

Beatrice's Last Smile

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Beatrice's Last Smile is undeniably well-researched. Pegg includes often marginalised groups, such as women and Jews, and the chapters on the later Middle Ages from the Albigensian Crusade to the Black Death are a particular highlight" -- Helen Carr, The Spectator

"In some of the most beautiful word portraits I have ever read, Mark Gregory Pegg has crafted a history of the West (the later Roman Empire through the end of the Middle Ages) that will captivate readers. With precision and delicacy, the pages come alive with the spiritual yearnings of people so like ourselves in their desire for the good life and yet so different in how they conceived it and thought to achieve it. This book was almost impossible to put down. It is one of the major accomplishments of modern historical scholarship and in every way a tour de force. Pegg is the real thing, a genuine magister, and Beatrice's Last Smile is a masterpiece." -- William C. Jordan, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University

"Mark Gregory Pegg offers a fresh, coherent and entirely original vision of the western Middle Ages. The intensity of his engagement with a remarkable range and variety of primary sources, the boldness of his design and the vigour of his prose combine the pace of a spirited charger with the depth and clarity of a timeless mosaic." -- R. I. Moore

"A fast-paced, cinematic, and sometimes wild ride through the Middle Ages. Expertly told vignettes, penetrating character studies, engaging walks through literary works, and periodic penetrating historical analyses―there is no other introduction to the Middle Ages quite like Beatrice's Last Smile. The book's countless short stories hang together in an intricate, delicate narrative structure, revealing a world of deep flaws and tremendous beauty and creating a reading experience that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant." -- Jay Rubenstein, author ebuchadnezzar's Dream

"One of the foremost historians of this generation evokes the worlds of the Middle Ages in magisterial prose. Through the aggregate of carefully rendered stories, Mark Gregory Pegg lays bare the lives, losses, ambitions, anxieties, disasters, and desires ― mediated by forces both numinous and practical ― that united men, women, and children in the religious experiences of the West. In doing so, he offers us what may be the most poignant and powerful history of the medieval world yet written." -- Anne E. Lester, Johns Hopkins University

"Quite a tapestry... Pegg naturally includes many of the era's most famous anecdotes, often freshly reinterpreted....Beatrice's Last Smile provides insightful and instructive reading." -- Michael Dirda, Washington Post

About the Author

Mark Gregory Pegg is Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom and The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (July 13, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 504 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199766487
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199766482
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.89 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.35 x 1.67 x 6.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 23 ratings

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Mark Gregory Pegg

Mark Gregory Pegg

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Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
23 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Bill
3.0 out of 5 stars Confusing
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2023
Verified Purchase
An extremely well researched book but unfortunately there is so much minutia that it draws from the significance of events. Additionally the time sequencing of for example the Roman period jumps around so much that people and places intermingle. Very very confusing to the reader; at least this one. An example would be that the Middle Ages did not start until around 476 but the first 20% of the book is a detail of the families of the Roman Empire.
6 people found this helpful
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Robert Ginsberg
3.0 out of 5 stars A good scholarly history of religion and its horrors
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2024
This is a solid and evidently original history of the Middle Ages, focusing on how people’s attitudes toward religion, the ancient gods, the monotheistic God, and formal churches changed through 2000 years of history. There’s much focus on individuals, famous (mostly men, mostly religious) and ordinary. But the takeaway for me was the sheer horror of a totalitarian religion (as Christianity strengthened over the centuries) to the point where it could tell you what to think, how to act, what to say, and what to believe--and if you varied so much as a hair’s breadth you were a heretic (never clearly defined) who could be punished with a savagery that takes the breath away. (When in doubt, kill the Jews.) This is a book about Sadism masquerading as holiness and I found it very depressing.
2 people found this helpful
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arcticpost
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, Readable, Humane
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2024
I may only have a high school diploma, speak one language, and worked in a warehouse-style environment for the past 30 years, but I’ve found this to be a well-written and engaging exploration of about 1,200 years in, primarily, Western Europe. We’re fortunate to live in a time where scholarship is devoting more energy and resources to help provide context, stories, and space to the people who came before us (and not just those in Western Europe).

While this may not have the readability of Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, or Asquith’s Crusades, or even the too popularly written Dan Jones books, this does slot into the category of books you can just as easily read on the bus as you can at home.
13 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Full of misguiding assumptions
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2024
There is a reason why critical historians of the Middle Ages in France and Germany are no longer writing books summing up more than a thousand years of “medieval times”. This book reflects exactly why: it reproduces poorly contested categories —e.g. “Religion is the denial of History” (Really? Read Reinhart Koselleck, man, he demonstrates Religion is the cradle of History—. Concepts as basic as these —History and Religion— are naïvely developed throughout. If you want a critical view of the Middle Ages, just go back to basics: Jacques Le Goff, Jean Claude Schmitt, Umberto Eco, Georges Duby. This book is bad.
2 people found this helpful
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Debbie M M
2.0 out of 5 stars A dissertation published as a book
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2023
Verified Purchase
The premise of this book is great, but it's a slog to read through. I have a Master's degree, 40 years of corporate consulting experience, and have studied Latin, Chinese, Japanese, German, and French. And yet, there was at least one vocabulary word on every page that I had to look up to understand the overall meaning of the given paragraph. Who writes like that? And who is the intended audience? If this book were to be rewritten in more common vernacular, I think it could be a hit.
7 people found this helpful
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Eva G
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2024
Verified Purchase
I agree with Tom Holland when he named Beatrice’s Last Smile as his book of 2023: “I hugely enjoyed Mark Gregory Pegg’s history of the Middle Ages, Beatrice’s Last Smile. It is a wonderful tapestry of a book, woven from myriad biographies and incidents ranging from the reign of Septimius Severus to the Hundred Years War: learned, compassionate and beautiful written. The obvious comparison is with Peter Brown – but a Peter Brown whose narrative extends to the fifteenth century. Methodologically innovative, often thrillingly revisionist, yet never less than a model of humane scholarship, it is the best single-volume history of the Middle Ages that I have read in a long while.”  I too hugely enjoyed this book.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Scott McLaren
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Stuff!
Reviewed in Canada on March 1, 2024
Verified Purchase
This is a great romp through the Middle Ages. Easy to read, lots to learn!
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