Norman F. Cantor (born in Winnipeg, Canada on November 19, 1929, died in Miami, Florida, United States on September 18, 2004) was a historian who specialized in the medieval period. Known for his accessible writing and engaging narrative style, Cantor's books were among the most widely-read treatments of medieval history in English. His textbook The Civilization of the Middle Ages, first published in 1964, remains one of the all-time bestsellers in the field. Motto: Template:Unhide = Unum Cum Virtute Multorum (One With the Strength of Many) Location City Information Established: 1738 (Fort Rouge), 1873 (City of Winnipeg) Area: 465. ... November 19 is the 323rd day of the year (324th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Magic City, The American Riviera, The Sixth Borough, M.I.A Location of Miami in Miami-Dade County, Florida. ... September 18 is the 261st day of the year (262nd in leap years). ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A historian is a person who studies history. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...

Cantor received his B.A. at the University of Manitoba in 1951. He went on to get his master's degree in 1953 from Princeton University and spent a year as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. He received his doctorate from Princeton in 1957 under the direction of the eminent medievalist Joseph R. Strayer. The University of Manitoba (established in 1877) is one of four universities in Winnipeg, Manitoba and was the first university ever established in Western Canada. ... 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1953 calendar). ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus mostly in the Borough of Princeton and partly in the Princeton Township in New Jersey, United States. ... Rhodes House in Oxford The Rhodes Scholarships were initiated after the death of Cecil John Rhodes and have been awarded to applicants annually since 1902 by the Oxford-based Rhodes Trust on the basis of academic qualities, as well as those of character. ... The University of Oxford (often called Oxford University), located in the city of Oxford, England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Joseph Strayer (1904–1987) was an influential 20th century American medieval historian. ...

After teaching at Princeton, Cantor moved to Columbia University from 1960 to 1966. He was a Leff professor at Brandeis University until 1970 and then was at SUNY Binghamton until 1976, when he took a position at University of Illinois at Chicago for two years. He finished his career at New York University, where he was professor of history, sociology and comparative literature. He retired in 1999. Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... Brandeis University is a private university in Waltham, Massachusetts. ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ... Binghamton University Binghamton University, also known as the State University of New York at Binghamton, is a public university located in the Binghamton, New York, USA area. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a public, state-supported research university. ... New York University (NYU) is a major research university in New York City. ...

Although his early work focused on English religious and intellectual history, Cantor's later scholarly interests were far more 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, which appeared in 1958 and remains an important contribution to the topic of church-state relations in medieval England. Throughout his career, however, Cantor preferred to write on the broad contours of Western history, and on the history of academic medieval studies in Europe and North America, in particular the lives and careers of eminent medievalists. His books generally received mixed reviews in academic journals, but were often popular bestsellers, buyoed by Cantor's fluid, often colloquial, writing style and his lively critiques of persons and ideas, both past and present. Cantor was intellectually conservative and expressed deep skepticism about methodological fads, particularly Marxism and postmodernism, but also argued for greater inclusion of women and minorities in traditional historical narratives. In both his best-selling Inventing the Middle Ages and his autobiography, Inventing Norman Cantor, he reflected on his strained relationship over the years with other historians and with academia in general. A monograph is a scholarly book or a treatise on a single subject or a group of related subjects. ... Marxism is the philosophy, social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German socialist philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Upon retirement in 1999, Cantor moved to Miami, Florida, where he continued to work on several books up to the time of his death.

Select bibliography of Cantor's publications

• The Medieval World 300-1500 ('Norman Cantor, Civilizaton of the Middle Ages, p.2')
• Perspectives on the European Past
• The Civilization of the Middle Ages (a revision of his earlier Medieval History: the Life and Death of a Civilization 1963)
• How to Study History (with Richard I. Schneider), 1967, a textbook that lays out fundamental methods and principles, including the uses of primary and secondary sources.
• The English
• Western Civilization: Its Genesis and Destiny
• The Meaning of the Middle Ages
• Inventing the Middle Ages : The Lives, Works and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century, 1991, a historiography of views of the Middle Ages, in twenty vitae of seminal historians and other shapers of contemporary perception, including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien: "Any bright American college sophomore who today takes a good survey course on medieval history has a better understanding of the components of the medieval world than anyone who wrote before 1895" wrote Cantor.
• Medieval Lives
• Medieval Society, 400-1450
• Twentieth Century Medieval Culture
• In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made, 2001
• The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era, 2004 (The subject is John of Gaunt)
• Alexander the Great, to be published in 2005

Cantor published a memoir in 2002, Inventing Norman Cantor: Memoirs of a Medievalist. Historiography is the study of the way history is and has been written. ... C.S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898–22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, and by his friends as Jack, was an Irish author and scholar of mixed Irish, English, and Welsh ancestry. ... John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) is best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. ... John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster (June 24, 1340 - February 3, 1399), the third surviving son of King Edward III of England, gained his name because he was born at Ghent in 1340. ...

External links

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