Best Websites and Books on Medieval History
Of course, when you’re searching for medieval history on sites such as Google or Yahoo, make sure that you know which part of this history you’re looking for. Would the years you’re researching be for the Dark Ages or Middle Ages? Some authors consider parts of the Renaissance to be medieval as well. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to summarize them all.
A good place to start would be the about.com site Medieval History. This site has many links to articles and other websites and they are organized by theme or subject, for instance if you were looking for something on castles, or perhaps daily life, you would be able to click on these links and be taken to the pertinent information. There’s no reason to read an entire essay on medieval history if you are looking for something specific within the topic.
If the last site wasn’t scholarly enough for you, you might want to take a look at the Labyrinth, a medieval history web page written by Georgetown University. This site has links to articles and essays as well, and the topics are even more narrow and focused. You can also search by type of information (such as multimedia, essays and even children’s materials) within the different categories and subcategories. An interesting series of menus allows you to select what you need specifically in just one step.
If you are looking for something more in the way of a timeline, I’d suggest this site, Timeref. It lays out the course of medieval history in a chronographical way, which might be easier to understand for some projects. The only problem that I have with this site is that it only encompasses medieval Britain, so if you’re looking for a more rounded European version of the history, you might want to look elsewhere.
There are plenty of books on this subject, and it would be hard to fit all of the information that can easily be found on the Internet into just a few books, as the websites about medieval history frequently have the same information and quote from these books as well. One book that looked promising without being too frightening was this one, The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History by Norman F. Cantor. This book covers the period between 500 and 1500 AD and is generally well reviewed, although the focus is more on the Middle Ages than that entire time period. This book, along with many others on the topic of medieval history, is available at Amazon. I urge you to conduct your own search online and in bookstores as well, as there is so much out there that one person cannot possibly review it all!
