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I am glad at least that Peter Munz agrees that my “worries” about medieval history are shared by all sensible people. New Zealand Geoffrey Barraclough replies: There is no rhyme or reason in his whole article. He contends that one cannot build up a sure body of facts in medieval history but stridently reiterates that we ought to compile statistical information about the middle ages. He attacks Ganshof for his schematizations but when Ganshof goes beyond them, Barraclough wraps him over the knuckles. He consistently confuses sociological history with quantitative history. He pleads for a concern with consequences rather than with origins, oblivious that the consequences of one event are at the same time always the origins of another. His hostility to historians of the middle ages is indiscriminate and he lists so many different reasons for condemning almost every known variety of medieval history that it would be difficult to say exactly for which of them his own recent popularized Medieval Papacy ought to be condemned.īarraclough, for instance, praises quantitative history and yet admits that in the middle ages the source material does not allow such an approach and then holds up Bloch as an example of quantitative history ( sic!). But his article is so full of inconsistencies and contradictions that one is forced to doubt his credentials. His worries about medieval history are shared by all sensible people. I would like to reply to Geoffrey Barraclough’s broadside ( NYR, June 4) against almost all varieties of medieval history, and although I am one of his many victims, I want to prove my good faith by not defending myself against his unreasoned abuse of my Frederick Barbarossa which he incomprehensibly describes as a “biography.”…