《星期日泰晤士报》年度历史书籍

就像我们一样，中世纪的男人和女人也担心变老，也会起水泡和消化不良，坠入爱河和生儿育女。然而，他们的生活充满了奇迹般的，富含隐喻的经历，这些经历和我们的经历截然不同。它们发生在这样一个世界，在这个世界，神的干预可能在一夜之间治愈致命的伤口，或者可以把国王的心脏从尸体摘下来，作为政治统治的有力象征被高高举起。

在这部插图丰富，不同寻常的历史中，杰克•哈特内尔（Jack Hartnell）揭示了中世纪（从君士坦丁堡到开罗和坎特伯雷）人们对生理自我的各种有趣的思考，并探索和体验了他们的生理自我。它从头到脚地阐述了中世纪的躯体，并在此过程中介绍了复杂得惊人的医学知识。整本书就像中世纪的露天历史剧一样展现在读者眼前，里面充满了圣人、士兵、哈里发、皇后、僧侣和庞然大物。

这本书将医学，艺术，音乐，政治，哲学和社会历史融合在一起，在介绍中世纪男女的真实生活方面，它是无与伦比的。
A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule.

In this richly-

illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process.

Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages.