The Age of Faith, Volume 4
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Narrated by:
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Stefan Rudnicki
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By:
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Will Durant
About this listen
A History of Medieval Civilization (Christian, Islamic, and Judaic) from Constantine to Dante, AD 325 - 1300
The fourth volume in Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, The Age of Faith surveys the medieval achievements and modern significance of Christian, Islamic, and Judaic life and culture. Like the other volumes in the Story of Civilization series, this is a self-contained work, which at the same time fits into a comprehensive history of mankind. It includes the dramatic stories of St. Augustine, Hypatia, Justinian, Mohammed, Harun al-Rashid, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, Maimonides, St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and many others, all in the perspective of integrated history. The greatest love stories in literature - of Héloise and Abélard, of Dante and Beatrice - are here retold with enthralling scholarship.
©2011 Will Durant (P)2014 Blackstone AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history the world’s greatest conquerors have made their mark not just on the battlefield, but in the societies they have transformed. Genghis Khan conquered by arms and bravery, but he ruled by commerce and religion. He created the world’s greatest trading network and drastically lowered taxes for merchants, but he knew that if his empire was going to last, he would need something stronger and more binding than trade. He needed religion.
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Fascinating history
- By R. C. Haynes on 12-29-18
By: Jack Weatherford
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The Life and Times of Chaucer
- By: John Gardner
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exquisite biography, John Gardner brings to life Geoffrey Chaucer, illuminating his writings and their inspiration like never before. Through exhaustive research and expert storytelling, Gardner takes readers through Chaucer’s varied career - from writing The Canterbury Tales to performing diplomatic work at the Parliament - and creates a fully realized portrait of an author whose work would remake the English language forever. Written with passion and insight, this a must-listen for those interested in Chaucer and the medieval time period.
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Good book, but quoted passages are in Old English
- By Kathi on 02-26-14
By: John Gardner
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The Bright Ages
- A New History of Medieval Europe
- By: Matthew Gabriele, David M. Perry
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The word medieval conjures images of the “Dark Ages”. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. The Bright Ages takes us through 10 centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them.
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Does exactly what it claims to clarify
- By Aaron Rapozo on 12-13-21
By: Matthew Gabriele, and others
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Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
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A learned, well-balanced postmodern history
- By Jacobus on 11-21-12
By: Peter Brown
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Foundation
- The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors: The History of England, Book 1
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Foundation the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past - a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house.
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The Most Annoying Narrator EVER
- By JudieBee on 12-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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The Templars
- The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons
- By: Michael Haag
- Narrated by: Guy Bethell
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Arguably one of the most provocative, puzzling, and misunderstood organizations of medieval times, the legendary Knights Templar have always been shrouded in a veil of mystery, while inspiring popular culture from Indiana Jones to Dan Brown. In The Templars, author Michael Haag offers a definitive history of these loyal Christian soldiers of the Crusades - sworn to defend the Holy Land and Jerusalem, but ultimately damned and destroyed by the Pope and his church.
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Narrator ruined it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-19-17
By: Michael Haag
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Charlemagne
- By: Johannes Fried, Peter Lewis
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 30 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When the legendary Frankish king and emperor Charlemagne died in 814 he left behind a dominion and a legacy unlike anything seen in Western Europe since the fall of Rome. Johannes Fried paints a compelling portrait of a devout ruler, a violent time, and a unified kingdom that deepens our understanding of the man often called the father of Europe.
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I really wanted to enjoy this -
- By Doris on 01-19-18
By: Johannes Fried, and others
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The Story of Philosophy (Deluxe Edition with The Age of Faith): The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers
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Philosophy has often seemed like the castor oil of the disciplines: healthy, but never pleasurable, and best when swallowed quickly and forgotten. Will Durant’s classic The Story of Philosophy is a welcome remedy for this misconception, and—in view of the fact that it is nearly 100 years old—a remarkably refreshing one. This deluxe edition includes The Age of Faith, the fourth volume in the great series, The Story of Civilization. It covers the years 1095—the launching of the First Crusade—and 1300.
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The Story of Philosophy
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Durant lucidly describes the philosophical systems of such world-famous “monarchs of the mind” as Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and Nietzsche. Along with their ideas, he offers their flesh-and-blood biographies, placing their thoughts within their own time and place and elucidating their influence on our modern intellectual heritage. This book is packed with wisdom and wit.
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The Story of Philosophy is a captivating intellectual journey that explores the evolution of human thought and the enduring legacy of great thinkers throughout history. Written by the renowned author Will Durant, this monumental work provides listeners with a comprehensive overview of the world's philosophical traditions, from ancient Greece to the modern era.
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The Age of Reason Begins
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The early modern era in Europe set the mold for the Western world today. It was a complex, tragic, yet pivotal time. It marked the transition between the dominance of the Catholic church throughout Western Europe and the present age of science, reason, and skepticism. The path through this transition was an exciting yet bloody and sorrowful one. The wars between Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rivaled those of the present in cruelty and atrocity. Durant takes us through the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in France.
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Wonderful
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Nice overview
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Puzzled
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Old Man’s Book
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Carl Sagan, writer and scientist, returns from the frontier to tell us about how the world works. In his delightfully down-to-earth style, he explores and explains a mind-boggling future of intelligent robots, extraterrestrial life and its consequences, and other provocative, fascinating quandaries of the future that we want to see today.
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Captivating Read.
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 1
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Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is one of the greatest texts in the English language. In magisterial prose, Gibbon charts the gradual collapse of the Roman rule form Augustus (23 BC - AD 14) to the first of the barbarian kings, Odoacer (476- 490 AD). It is a remarkable account, with the extravagant corruption and depravity of emperors such as Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus contrasted by the towering work of Constantine, Julian, and other remarkable men.
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Beautifully written and narrated
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The History of Rome: The Complete Works
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Titus Livy's only known surviving work is a monumental history of Rome that was originally written in Latin. It is estimated that Livy's The History of Rome was written between 27 and 9 BC and covers the legends of Aeneas, the fall of Troy, the city's founding in 753 BC, and Livy's account ends with the reign of Emperor Augustus. The History of Rome is a must-have for anyone interested in ancient history and the Roman era. With colorful detail and intriguing insight, Titus brings to life some of the most turbulent times in human history.
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A pleasure to read...
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Wow! Outstanding Work on the Period
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To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level, from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a “classical Europe,” using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures. As this consistently fresh and surprising new audio book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past - one filled with great leaders and writers....
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Great Reading Flawed By Editing
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On Politics
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Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is "better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes hearing about them a transcendent experience.
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Simply no book quite like this
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The Story of Civilization, Volume I: The Ancient World
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Children should not just hear about history, they should live it. In The Story of Civilization, the ancient stories that have shaped humanity come alive like never before. Author Phillip Campbell uses his historical expertise and story-telling ability together in tandem to present the content in a fresh and thrilling way.
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A brilliant panorama of the ancient world
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What listeners say about The Age of Faith, Volume 4
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jonathan
- 11-15-16
Very informative
Quite lengthy at times, but totally worth the investment. Patience is a virtue. Hard to wrap your head around all the information. Be ready to bookmark!
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- KenVille
- 12-22-21
Incredible Reading
Durant's lifetime of research is obvious in this epic work, covering every angle and aspect of a bar and complex history.
And I don't think any other narrator could have given this multilingual treasure a more fitting voice.
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- Peter Y C.
- 08-05-14
Epic
Everyone should be exposed to this time period of history through this work in seeing the transformation of people groups from savages to civilized, to organized states, of states that rise and fall, and the slow but steady growth of Europe under Christianity. The blossoming of Islam and the subsequent stumbling and fall of it's luminaries sweeps before you.
What I loved is Durant's weaving - he'll tell one epic, then another of the same time period and bring back the same characters so the reader can see how they fit in a different context.
Stefan Rudnicki's narration is awesome for this work, a steady, constant, almost invisible narration allowing the story to shine through.
Loved every part of it and I'm much richer for the listen, especially for the new understanding of our culture and how it developed, albeit slowly in fits and starts.
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- J. mcwhirter
- 11-28-18
Bugs
Bugs in chapters xvI, XVII, and and the first three chapters of Book IV....so far.
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- Kindle Customer
- 01-04-22
A history of heresies.
A history of heresies. As byzantine as the cultures and faiths it covers.
Durant's fourth volume in his "The Story of Civilization" continues its epic march through...well...everything to bring us the story of the great monotheistic faiths (and their impacts on their respective cultures) from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. Durant covers everything from the rise and splintering of Islam, the Jewish diaspora, and the inevitable doctrinal hair-splitting that engulfed the Christian faith during the Middle Ages.
While Durant approaches this series from a squarely Occidentalist focus, he treats all sides with requisite respect and writes eloquently of the art and poetry of (and faith traditions) of non-Western peoples.
Here, we get Goths, Holy Roman Empires, vassals, flying buttresses, Catharists, and tonsures galore. When I say Durant covers everything, I mean it. While Durant has never been terribly interested in warfare or battles (traditional "history"), you'd be hard pressed to find a topic that Durant doesn't cover at least to some degree.
That breadth of topics is also the book's weakest point. Because Durant covers so much geographic, artistic, civilizational, religious, and temporal territory, the history is less rigorous than it otherwise might be in a more focused/limited work (contrast with volumes "The Life of Greece" and "Caesar and Christ" -- limited primarily to the Greek and Roman states). An example of this is when Durant covers the history of Scotland from 300-1300 AD in about 7 pages. William Wallace is rolling over in his grave. And don't even get me started on the vagaries of Catholic or Islamic heresies -- you'd have more luck counting the stars in the sky than keep track of them all.
Ultimately, this is a forgivable sin (an indulgence even) since Durant writes so well about so much. Another reviewer described him as a "popularizer" -- and insofar as Durant brings (and keeps) the story of Civilization alive to the general public (even if this book is 70 years old), "popularizer" ain't a bad thing to be.
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- Bill_Ben
- 08-03-20
Excellence in presentation of history
It is unfair to give only five stars for this book, when thousands of much inferior books receive five stars. But the highest possible rating is only five stars.
I listened to the superior reading by Mr. Rudnicki, and was truly impressed, especially when he pronounced foreign words correctly.
As far as Will Durant is concerned, his erudite writing and style has not been duplicated yet. This is the fourth book by Will Durant I have read, and will read all the others I have already purchased.
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- Max Osterhaus
- 03-31-16
Fantastic.
This is truly the finest of classical historiography. Durant was one of a kind and he culmination of the era just before the much needed, but much destructive fracturing of cultural and history in our critical, modern and postmodern age.
His is a delicate handling and deep understanding that ranges elegantly through kings, migrations, arts, technology, metaphysics, religion, and notably the common man or woman. And all of this in such writing as to do justice to those sensitive souls he chronicles.
The narrator is also notability masterful in his craft. His emphasis restrained but always in the right place and his pronunciations of many languages acceptable, if not always perfect.
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- Alexis Allen
- 01-03-17
Best audiobook ever (to date) 🌟
The writing is instructive and peppered with delightful details that bring warmth the the subject. The writing is excellent and you wouldn't know it wasn't published this year. It's well structured so that subjects that are perhaps less interesting to the reader are easy to skip past. S. Rudinicki is a superb talent, not just thanks to his uniquely engaging voice but also because his performance is flawless. No peculiar breaths or noise, perfect cadence, like the voice of a beloved father reading a story. I was really impressed by this production which, at 61 hours, must have been an epic undertaking. Do not hesitate on this one. It is excellent.
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- Paul H Aube
- 05-26-16
Faith, fiction of men
Compared to the previous volumes, especially Our Oriental Heritage and the Life of Greece, it is interesting to learn how religion was conceived to organize faith like the Greeks and Romans organized the city-states and government.
The narration is very well laid out to provide a very good understanding of organized faith and the comparison between christianity, islam and judaism.
It is by no means injurious to faith. More a revelation of men's tendency to control and exact power through faith.
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- Salvador
- 09-27-22
amazing book
such a wonderful book, just wish the chapters had the actual chapter labels , not too big of a deal just an inconvenience that would certainly make the experience much better and navigation much much easier.
now, the book itself is short on military history military descriptions, but the history and descriptions of medieval society in it's whole from judaic civilization to islamic civilization to the frozen mystical north is absolutely amazing. I truly felt the essence of medieval society in it's whole for a while. amazing experience. I'd highly recommend it, one of my favorites.
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