Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World (The Hinges of History)

This book is an absolute joy to read and to absorb. It is particularly informative for those who are not religious but who are well versed in classical studies and philosophy. More than anything it helps understand the Christian religion, its struggles, catastrophes and success in guiding human development through the past 2000 plus years. It is also a clear pictorial and philosophical condemnation of ignorance and stupidity among those who base their lives on religion without understanding of theology and its history. I am going to read it again after I think about it for few months for one reading is not enough to absorb its vast amount of historical data and ideas, which has challenged humanity for so long and continues to challenge us. And I greatly enjoyed its references to contemporaries and modern events.

The hidges of history series are great!

I bought this book after seeing the author interviewed on PBS because he impressed me as scholarly yet able to convey his ideas in simple language. The subject matter is complicated and covers a broad spectrum of events over a long period of history. Mr. Cahill's style is entertaining, easy to read and brings the characters to life. Aside from its appeal to a general audience, this book would be a wonderful reading assignment for middle school and high school students, especially those who find history to be a dry, boring subject.

Who’s Erasmus and Savonarola? I’d heard these names, but didn’t really know what they were up to. This book is easily readable, to the point, and very educational! Really helped me understand all the intellectual and theological ideas sweeeping through Europe at a crucial time, and how we got to where we are today.

Thomas Cahill combines impeccable research, cogent commentary, and lucid writing in a refreshing look at history. I've read many of his books and have never come away disappointed!

The simplest way to describe any of author Cahill's writing is with the phrase "interesting and opinionated". This book is the 6th in what Cahill calls his "Hinges of History" - musings on particular groups or times of history. And by the way, I still think his first book in the series, "How the Irish Saved Civilization" is his best.This book is not a tone-neutral tome nor is it complete in any way. But it covers 2 subjects, Renaissance artists, and Reformation leaders, in a free-wheeling, opinionated yet erudite manner. You can disagree with much of the book but it is written so honestly and so scholarly, with Cahill doing much of his own translation of sources, that you can only praise the intellect and opinions behind it. Even if Cahill attacks some of your most cherished beliefs. And isn't learning other opinions and views why we read in the first place?A few minor criticisms. Some of the translations are, shall we say, unique to Cahill. Cahill does throw in occasional then-current political jabs that are increasingly irrelevant and obscure with the passage of the years since this book was published.Overall, great fun. 4 stars.

Thomas Cahill is a profound scholar who has the additional gift of writing beautiful prose. His love of his subject is evident on every page. It is impossible to read this book or any of its predecessors without being drawn in by his enthusiasm. All six of the "hinges of history" have been a joy to read for anyone interested in how we got here.

Perhaps because I consider myself a fan of Prof. Thomas Cahill, and someone who learned from and enjoyed his last book,  Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World (Hinges of History) ; I am making a point of my disappointment with Heretics and Heroes. It is not a bad book, it is not an exemplar of what Cahill can do. In some sections you can almost watch as he hits the coast button and indulges himself in soft peddling things like the Spanish Inquisition and taking sides between the Popes of the last 40 years. The book itself is amazingly well illustrated with very sharp details and colors. The illustrations are needed because Cahill does a very good job of connecting the visual arts and their effects on and reflections of the predominate philosophies of their time and place. My recommendation: not a bad book, just not Cahill at his best.Heretics and Heros begins with a self-indulgent fictional game of tennis between Plato and Aristotle. No such game was ever played. It is in the introduction to lead us to what should be a central theme of the book. A historic alternation between the philosophies proposed by the two Greeks. Either: Reality is where humans live and it is in learning about this world that goodly humans learn how to best live.OrA competing belief that reality is false and the task of being a goodly person consists of looking past reality and preparing for the Kingdom to come.This thread will appear from time to time in the text. Usually when it does it is up to the reader to spot it.Too much of the text is about too many things not all tied to the period under study. There are regular asides about modern people and politics and opinions about where the Vatican has and does not have it right.When he is focused on the people of the Renaissance and Reformation we do get flashes of the biographical and historic analysis that is the good in Prof. Cahill. This is said with reservations. Martin Luther is necessarily a central figure of this period. Cahill shrugs off any possibility that the man had major psychological scaring from his upbringing. The historian would have you believe that the human child decides upon psychological attitudes, not based on what and how he is treated in the so called formative years, but by polling his contemporaries and rationalizing hurt against a standard deviation of normal levels of domestic violence. The diaries of Luther include descriptions of instances wherein the reformer had physical fights with the devil, ended when Martin tosses his feces at Satan. Cahill will only admit that Luther had constipation, and that only while under the physical constraints of safe keeping.A fair percentage of Heretics and Heroes is built around the visual artists of the Renaissance and Reformation. This is consistent with the promise of the book’s subtitle. It is another aspect of the good in the book. Perhaps of necessity the artist chosen are limited, but in making his choices, he tends to depend on expressions like “the best” or the ‘only’ when the more legitimate expression would be a favorite or the ones the Cahill has chosen to represent a period. Allowing for this compromise, too much of what Cahill says about the artists is an echo of earlier opinions by Lord Kenneth Clark. Still the illustrations are reproduced with amazing technical exactitude. They are present in generous numbers.I liked Heretics and Heroes. I wish it had been written closer to the standard Thomas Cahill has elsewhere achieved.

i read it with pleasure

informative

Very satisfied!

no comment

The book explores a very interesting premise about the historical influence of famous and infamous prominent figures from the classical to recent times. Naturally, the constraints of balance restrict some elaboration, but each chapter is so intriguing that invariably concluding remarks seems painfully premature. I recommend the book and especially the conceptual focus that it explores.