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Aided by a team of eminent medievalists from across Europe, Jacques Le Goff presents a compelling series of over one hundred portraits of key fi gures from the Middle Ages, spanning the 4th to the 15th centuries. The list includes rulers and popes, theologians and heretics, writers and discoverers, from Saint Augustine to Christopher Columbus. Particular attention is paid to the role of women, from the pioneering pilgrim Egeria, who travelled to the Holy Land in the 4th century, to the Benedictine mystic Hildegarde de Bingen, or the more familiar Joan of Arc. A full section is devoted to mythical and literary fi gures, from King Arthur to Robin Hood, from the Virgin Mary to Satan, the latter two exemplifying the ubiquitous struggle between good and evil in the thoughts and minds of the time. Lively studies of kings, queens, scholars, painters and architects all help explain the complex relationship between artistic creation during this period and the three building blocks of power: sacerdotium, regnum, stadium - the church, the monarchy and universities. A wide selection of paintings, engravings and drawings, all painstakingly selected by Le Goff from contemporaneous sources, provide a visually stunning accompaniment to this highly accessible introduction to the magical “age of the cathedrals”.