5) 提出、在他的Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe (New York, 197)一书中确立的“皮朗假设”而定。The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1941—63)反映了专家的一致意见；C.S. and C. S.L. Orwin, The Open Fields, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1954)把农业的实际经验用于阐述争议众多的庄园土地类型。近来由杰出学者撰写的综合性著作包括：M.M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain, 1100—1500 (Berkeley, 1972), 和Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1971).
在政治事件方面，勉强接受一份比大多数著作更有趣的书目似乎是最好的办法；Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (Chicago, 1961); Carl Stephenson, Medieval Feudalism (Ithaca, N. Y., 1942); Sir Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1951—54); Charles Homer Haskins, The Normans in European History (Boston, 1915); Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1947); 和P. H. Sawyer, The Age of Vikings (New York, 1962).
关于文化史，同样武断原则建议如下书目：R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1953); Christopher Dawson, The Making of Europe (London, 1932); John Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London, 1924); L. J. Daley, The Medieval University (New York, 1961); Cahrles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1927); C. H. McIlwain, The Growth of Political Thought in the West (New York, 1932); David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London, 1962); Ernst Kitzinger, Early Medieval Art in the British Museum, 2nd ed. (London, 1955); Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (Latrobe, Pa., 1951); Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains, rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1961); 和Ernst Cassirer et al. eds., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago, 1948). David Talbot Rice, ed., The Dawn of European Civilization (London, 1965) 是一部插图精美的介绍欧洲和近东艺术第一个千年纪的著作。两部总论性的著作追溯了欧洲的重要主题：Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley, 1967), 讨论了欧洲关于自然的观念，和Herschel Baker, The Dignity of Man (Cambridge