Mark Pegg

Sep 1, 2024 | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Mark Pegg

Pegg assembles 133 vignettes, brief glimpses into pivotal moments in the lives of the mostly Christian worthies who together exemplify the long reach of the European era, Constantine to Columbus. Only a few of these snippets run past five pages; several span only one or two. Expect to find many from the era’s A-team here (Charlemagne, Aquinas, Boccaccio), as well as a flock of delightfully obscure benchwarmers (the visionary Barontus, Archbishop Agobard of Lyon, Gervaise of Tilbury).

Feb 19, 2024 | shepherd.com | Eleanor Janega |Mark Pegg |Geoffrey Chaucer |Nevill Coghill

This book made me rethink how we consider the idea of the Middle Ages–full stop. Pegg tracks the medieval period through the concept of holiness, and if you think that might be boring, then I have got news for you about how wild medieval (and Late Antique!) people were.

Aug 30, 2023 | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Mark Pegg

Beatrice’s Last Smile diverges from the usual muster of sweeping European histories. If you’re drawn to triumphant tomes bristling with systematic thought — with wide-angle analytical vistas stretching horizon to horizon — keep looking. Author Mark Gregory Pegg has something else in mind in this happily surprising volume.

Jun 16, 2023 | libraryjournal.com | Mark Pegg

Pegg (history, Washington Univ.; A Most Holy War) bookends his sweeping narrative of medieval Western history with the Christian martyrdoms of Roman patrician Vibia Perpetua in 203 and of French heroine Jeanne la Pucelle in 1431. While not a history of religion, this is a religious history. The author draws on holiness as a connective thread across place and time, tracing shifts in religious culture from public piety to personal faith and from penitential to confessional culture.