A salutary reading

The great medievalist Jacques Heers what brings us a work that I found excellent in many respects. His style is simple, accessible and unadorned, its clear demonstration. This book is accessible to everyone, including (and especially!) Those who do not know too much this time.
The author shows us how the medieval term is now considered a derogatory term synonymous backlog, while on the one hand, the "Middle Ages" does not formally exist (one can only describe as a holding a single period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the (re) discovery of America!) and, secondly, our ancestors were not so backward that, on the contrary . The reality is obviously much more complex ... The peasants were not poor wretches kowtowing in the fields, nourishing herbs and roots, paying all of their income or their crops at a tyrannical lord who took pleasure to persecute them, all with the blessing of the clergy agent of obscurantism, but social categories were infinitely richer and more diverse that would have us believe. It suffices to compare the level of our present taxation (although higher than at the "Middle Ages"), and the erection of consumerism in religion we are devout worshipers, to realize that the trial we make medieval said time is particularly unfair, cruel and very far from reality ...
The author shows us how this has built "black legend" (from the 1300s to the art!) And how it has become an undisputed reality and very long indisputable, particularly under the aegis of the education, which has long drawn (and often still stands) a caricature of life of our ancestors.
A weakness, however: for the author, things sometimes seem to forget in itself so much that underpin a strong case some of his comments, or uses only one example to counter a false rependue idea. But again, this does not affect all of the work, which is dominated by a serious argument, enriched with many references.
Another weakness on the form this time: the shells that are quite numerous in the text, but which nevertheless do not detract from the quality of the work.