The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era
by By Cantor, Norman F. and Cantor, Judy
Category: Biography & Autobiography , Royalty

There may be no more fascinating historical period than the  late fourteenth century in Europe. The Hundred Years' War ravaged  the continent, yet gallantry, chivalry, and literary brilliance  flourished in the courts of England and elsewhere. Chaucer wrote  brilliant satire, lords and ladies invented courtly rituals of  love and romance, yet the vast bulk of Europe's population  struggled with plague, economic uncertainty, and violence. It was  a world in transition, soon to be replaced by the Renaissance and  the Age of Exploration -- and John of Gaunt was its central  figure. Norman F. Cantor, the best known and most popular  historian of the Middle Ages, brings Gaunt to life brilliantly in  his newest work, The Last Knight.   John of Gaunt was the richest man in Europe, apart from its  monarchs, and he epitomized and surpassed the ideals of the late  Middle Ages. From chivalry -- he was taught at a young age to  fight on horseback like the knights of old -- to courtly love --  his three marriages included two romantic love-matches -- he was  an ideal leader. He created lavish courts, sponsoring Chaucer and  proto-Protestant religious thinkers, and he survived the dramatic  Peasants' Revolt, during which his sumptuous London residence was  burned to the ground. As the head of the Lancastrian Branch of  the Plantagenet family, he was the unknowing father of the War of  the Roses, for his son Henry Bolingbroke usurped the crown from  Gaunt's nephew, Richard II, after Gaunt had died. He passed away  just as one great era gave way to the next: His grandson Henry  the Navigator launched the Age of Exploration. Gaunt's adventures  represent the culture and mores of the Middle Ages as few others'  do, and his death is portrayed by Cantor as the end of that  fascinating period.