In the last 60 years, nuclear disaster and climate change have generated a mood of collective pessimism, insecurity and self-hatred, tinged with apocalyptic enthusiasm, such as we have not seen since the beginning of the 11th century. It seems a good time to revisit the earlier occasion. That was obviously Tom Holland’s original plan. But it is hard to fill a book with a history of nothing, even if it happened three times. So what we have instead is a history of the century before and after the first millennium: the build-up, then the relief. There is not much else that unites this disparate period. But Tom Holland is a gifted narrator who covers the field with panache and a rich fund of adjectives. His theme is darkness and light, and he achieves dramatic effect by intensifying both.

The terrible tenth century was as grim a time in Europe’s history as any before the 20th. The continent was invaded by Vikings from the north and west, seaborne Arabs from the south, and nomadic Magyar tribes from the east. They left trails of destruction and death wherever they went. Holland paints a black picture of the life of peasants, even if they lived far from the invasion routes, in an age when the lot of countrymen was enslavement or indiscriminate murder at the hands of local noblemen. The kingdoms of western Europe splintered into small fragments, whose rulers terrorised their own subjects and fought against each other, reducing much of the continent to a barely habitable waste.

With the passing of the millennium, we move into an age of optimism and hope, but with dark streaks almost as forbidding as the blackness of the previous century. Holland traces the history of the spiritual revival associated with the Burgundian abbey of Cluny and the reform of the Church by a renascent papacy. It was an age in which new political communities came into being, recognisable as the prototypes of modern nation-states. Humble men found a new solidarity, which enabled them to create relatively orderly societies, at least by comparison with the earlier period, but also to express their new-found sense of identity in savage vendettas against outsiders, such as heretics and Jews. In a sense, the First Crusade of 1097-99 was the culmination of all the feelings of community, collective aggression and religious excitement which marked out the 11th century as different.

Before reading Millennium, I would have said that to write a compelling narrative, for a non-specialist readership, about this difficult and rebarbative period of our history was well-nigh impossible. Obviously it isn’t. Tom Holland has written one which is based on wide reading in the contemporary sources and the rather impenetrable scholarly literature. He has a good feel for the dramatic moment and the colourful personality, as well as explaining much that is opaque about the mentality of the period. We do not have to agree with him that this is the birth of our world. Most of us will be grateful that it is not.

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