Medieval Nights

Night in the Middle Ages
by Jean Verdon, translated by George Holoch
South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2002
(235 pages; $45.00, hardcover)

reviewed by Richard J. Mammana, Jr.

Sometime between midnight and eight o’clock last Christmas morning, a foot of heavy snow fell on my family’s house in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. The roads were impassable because of a treacherous combination the snow had formed with ice, and we ended up spending the day together rather than in customary visits to our extended family. At around dinner time, somewhere not far from our house, the weight of this “hoarfrost like ashes” snapped a power line or two or three, leaving us and tens of thousands of others without electricity for between 12 and 20 hours.

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