Norman Frank Cantor (November 19, 1929 – September 18, 2004) was a Canadian-American medievalist. Known for his accessible writing and engaging narrative style, Cantor's books were among the most widely read treatments of medieval history in English. He estimated that his textbook The Civilization of the Middle Ages, first published in 1963, had a million copies in circulation.

Life and scholarship

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to a Jewish family, Cantor received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Manitoba in 1951. He moved to the United States to obtain an M.A. degree (1953) from Princeton University, then spent a year as a Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford. He returned to Princeton and received his Ph.D. in 1957 under the direction of eminent medievalist Joseph R. Strayer. He also began his teaching career at Princeton. His magnum opus within the subject domain became the basic textbook and popular historical standard on the period for many years, and in a later work he defined the canon of major medievalists.

After teaching at Princeton, Cantor became a professor at Columbia University from 1960 to 1966. He was a Leff professor at Brandeis University until 1970 and then was at Binghamton University until 1976, when he took a position at University of Illinois at Chicago for two years. He then went on to New York University (NYU), where he served as Dean of NYU's College of Arts & Sciences, as well as a professor of history, sociology and comparative literature.

Although his early work focused on English religious and intellectual history, Cantor's later scholarly interests were diverse, and he found more success writing for a popular audience than he did engaging in more narrowly focused original research. He did publish one monograph study, based on his graduate thesis, Church, kingship, and lay investiture in England, 1089-1135,

Upon retirement in 1999, Cantor moved to Miami, Florida, where he continued to work on several books up to the time of his death, including the New York Times bestseller In the Wake of the Plague (2001). He was also editor of Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (1999).

Scholars who receive their own chapter length treatments in Cantor's canon of major western medievalists include:

  • Frederick William Maitland ('Law & Society')
  • Ernst Kantorowicz & Percy Ernst Schramm ('The Nazi Twins')
  • Marc Bloch & Louis Halpern ('The French Jews')
  • C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien & Frederic Maurice Powycke ('The Oxford Fantasists')
  • Charles Haskins & Joseph Strayer ('American Pie')
  • David Knowles & Étienne Gilson ('After the Fall')
  • R.W. Southern ('The Once and Future King') <nowiki/><nowiki/> <nowiki/>

Outriders [re: Medievalists also receiving mention for their indelible contributions in the final chapter] or in small sections or shorter discussions throughout the book:

Eileen Power, Johan Huizinga, Gershom Scholem, Henri Pirenne, George Duby, Erwin Panofsky, M.M. Postan, Carl Erdmann, Theodor Ernst Mommsen, Emanuelle le Roy Ladurie, Carlo Ginzburg, Aby Warburg, Frances Yates, Fritz Saxl, and Erwin Panofsky.

References

  • New York Times News Service obituary
  • The Telegraph newspaper, 1 October 2004 Norman Cantor
  • About Inventing the Middle Ages
  • Review of Inventing the Middle Ages in New York Review of Books