In this charming journey into the past, a historian reveals medieval wisdom that can still guide us today.

"One of the most compelling medieval history books I have ever read." —Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England

A few years ago, Peter Jones was teaching medieval history at a university in Siberia when living through his third icy winter tipped him into a dark place. Luckily, he knew something few of us know: that The Middle Ages were the golden age of self-help.

In Self-Help from the Middle Ages, history professor Peter Jones makes the case that never in history has so much energy and talent gone into studying how the mind works. In this charming and illuminating guide, he reveals a lost map of our passions and impulses that can help us understand our own human struggles in new and powerful ways. Because although we now think of the Seven Deadly Sins as a catalog of forbidden behavior, in the Middle Ages, when they were at the height of their popularity, they were a path to self-knowledge. A psychological map that laid out seven basic patterns of thought, showing how our thinking can go astray and how we can find our way home.

With beautiful illustrations drawn from medieval art and literature, Peter Jones explores the lives of scholars and saints, mystics and monarchs, along with the insights they offer into temptation, frustration, addiction, compulsion, burnout, rage, fear, anxiety, and grief. Self-Help from the Middle Ages is an irresistible read for lovers of history and all those who seek wisdom from the past.

“Exhilarating. . . . [Jones’s] scholarship is as deep as the Mariana Trench, but he bears it like thistledown. He is never pompous, and his book is funny, informative, even optimistic. It seems that our ancestors really were very like us, only a good deal wiser. We could learn a lot from them, and this is the perfect place to start.” —Financial Times

“[A] revelatory exploration of late medieval psychology. . . . Some of the most striking passages are those which describe the deep scholarly joys, at once intellectual and visceral, of discovering unlooked-for human connections with the past, complemented by a profound sense of wonder. . . . [Self-Help From the Middle Ages] is a moving, eloquent and important book, reclaiming the centuries of subtle psychological thought, and with it the emotional lives of our medieval ancestors, from the permafrost of modern contempt.” —Spectator (Australia)

“Jones’s book is a witty, thoughtful excavation of how medieval society understood emotional life, and how seriously it took the problem of being human. . . . By the end of my week of trying various self-help techniques and practices from the book, I hadn’t joined a monastery, nor had I quite managed to give up my phone, but I had walked outside more, just for the sake of it. I’d eaten better, cried and stopped searching for the next quick fix. . . . Consider me a convert.” —Tatler

“A scholarly and forgiving rethinking of problematic behavior for a world sketched by psychology and secularism.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Historian Jones debuts with an illuminating and eclectic survey of how medieval thinkers grappled with perennial psychological challenges through the framework of the seven deadly sins. . . . Throughout, the author interweaves colorful details of medieval therapies with a compassionate commentary on how the ‘most intimate struggles of our lives’ are part of a quest to understand the human condition that’s existed for nearly as long as humanity itself. [Self-Help from the Middle Ages] captivates.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The history . . . is first rate. Jones is a thoughtful, well-travelled scholar with a hugely impressive command of archival material across Europe. He is also an astute art historian and a good storyteller with an eye for a killer image." —Dan Jones, Sunday Times

“The way Jones connect the past to the present is uniquely personal and vivid. . . . [Self-Help from the Middle Ages] teems with fascinating insights into medieval celebrities like the writer Dante Alighieri and the artist Albrecht Dürer. . . . [Jones is] an exceptional scholar and [an] incisive, colourful writer.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Self-Help from the Middle Ages manages to be two wondrous things at once: a dazzling tour of medieval moral theology and a riveting guide to that era’s lessons for our contemporary lives. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, Jones’ book will delight readers with its erudition, relevance, and wisdom.” —Bruce Holsinger, author of Culpability and The Invention of Fire

“One of the most compelling medieval history books I have ever read. It does what I feel all good history books should do—it informs us about ourselves. . . . It will tantalise and delight. . . . I genuinely loved this book.” —Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveller's Guide To Medieval England

“Funny and profound. Offers help from across the ages to very modern concerns. A mind cleanse and an antidote to Instagram, it makes us feel relieved we’re all human after all. A great book.” —Xand van Tulleken, co-host of What's Up Docs?

“This book came as a wonderful surprise. Peter Jones, a learned historian, combines self-help, the middle ages, and autobiographical confessions and somehow weaves a tapestry that triumphantly relates all three. In particular, he highlights the subtlety and psychological insights in medieval writers, whose wise treatments of disorderly desires have helped him to navigate his own life, and could help any of us to do the same.” —Simon Blackburn, author of Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“From Lucifer’s iridescent footwear, to supermarket shopping in Vladimir Putin’s Siberia, this is a unique and delightful book: part personal memoir, part investigation of the very idea of sin, part magical mystery tour through some of the world’s greater medieval book collections. I can think of nothing else quite like it. Written by an acknowledged expert, yet with the thrill of a treasure hunt, it blows the cobwebs off centuries in which, however virtuous those in pursuit of goodness, the Devil always had the best tunes.” —Nick Vincent, Professor of Medieval History, University of East Anglia

“In the fine tradition of medieval confessional writing, Self-Help from the Middle Ages examines the ways in which voices from the past can help us navigate our present-day struggles, no matter what they may be. Combining thoughtful scholarship, timeless wisdom, and aching vulnerability, Peter Jones reminds us that the one constant in history is the beautiful complexity of the human heart.” —Danièle Cybulskie, author of How to Live Like a Monk and host of The Medieval Podcast

“This book is brimming with exceptional insight into the lives and minds of medieval people, but it also offers a glimpse into the magic of a historian’s practice. Personal and deeply thoughtful, it is an ode to medieval history and its possibilities in the modern day.” —Helen Carr, author of Sceptred Isle

“Peter Jones’ Self-Help from the Middle Ages is a treat for the history glutton. Funny, candid, and revelatory, it shows how medieval thinkers struggled with the same quirks of the human condition as we do. I loved following Jones on his quest to decode the medieval recipe for a contented life, whether it was to a classroom in Siberia, a library in London, or a Spanish cathedral claiming to house the Holy Grail. Jones makes the Middle Ages feel close enough to touch—and its lessons are needed now more than ever.” —Irina Dumitrescu, writer and Professor of Medieval English, University of Bonn

“A thoughtful exploration of medieval ideas—and how they can illuminate a modern life. A lovely book in which personal reflections and historical insights from the Middle Ages are woven together to look at emotion, desire and self-understanding.” —Peter Frankpan, author of The Silk Roads