The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300 (Brian Tierney, 1964)

Since finishing grad school, the notion of "required reading" has been slightly alien, and it kind of awkward has found a way to insert itself in the mechanisms I use to measure the reading of my own choosing. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the class, and who knows, maybe one day I would have found Tierney's book on my own.

Very much like the other "required" book featured here, this is a combination of primary sources and commentary by Tierney. With no disrespect to Hillgarth, Tierney provides exceptionally good introductions, effectively half the price of admission here. He really puts the documents in their context and not a single one left me scratching my head, wondering why it was included.

One thing it was easy to get hung up on was the episodic nature of the chapters, usually featuring a pope and emperor having the world's biggest yo mama fight complete with scripture citations. There was a lot of other things going on during this period, so I think it is important to not stop here but examine other aspects, such as the work of the great thinkers of the period (the 13th century was especially rich in this area).

However, if that was the intention, of either the book or the class, then both have succeeded wildly.