Download PDF | (New illustrated history of the world) Michael Angold - The world of the Middle Ages-Hamlyn (1970).
136 Pages
Introduction
This volume deals with the most relevant and significant manifestations of the central medieval period. It is the period in which the ancient Greco-Roman inheritance had come to full fruition and in which also the amalgamation with the Germanic foundations of society had taken place. This central medieval period witnessed therefore the full fusion of disparate historical and ideological strains and, precisely by virtue of this, gave birth to a number of features which not only coloured the complexion of the age itself, but also, and perhaps moreimportant, laid the foundations of what was to become the modern period, at least as far as Europe is concerned.
The volume spans the age between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries and though the character of the age was certainly more static than our own, there were nevertheless far more changes than is commonly assumed, both in the structure of society and above all in the ideas which sustained it. Moreover, it would be erroneous to assume that because of its undeniably static character medieval society did not expand, both horizontally, that is, externally and in width, and vertically, that is, internally and in depth.
What gave medieval society in these centuries its particular physiognomy was the virtually undisputed and uncontested sway of certain basic tenets of Christianity. The consequence of this was the great power which the papacy wielded from the time of Gregory VII in the late eleventh century and which reached its dizzy heights in the pontificate of Innocent HI (1198-1216). From then on the papacy slowly but quite perceptibly declined in authority, standing and prestige: the conciliar movement which was a by-product of the Great Schism in the fourteenth century, reversed the position and function of the pope by subjecting him to the power of a general council. The pope, hitherto an uncontrolled and uncontrollable monarch, was now subjected to the supervision of the council which acted as a representative organ of the whole of Christendom.
Similarly nurtured by an application of Christian principles was secular medieval rulership in the shape of “The king by the grace of God’—the theocratic ruler—who derived his power from divinity through the administration of unction. This kind of rulership precluded the people from con-
By WALTER ULLMANN
ferring any power on the king: thus what the people had not given, they could not modify, still less take away. The essential feature in both the institutions of the papacy and kingship was the working of the monarchic principle: in each instance the individuals were subjects of the monarch. The great change which occurred in the_ thirteenth century and of which we are largely the beneficiaries, was that the status of the individual as a subject was turned into that of a citizen fully partaking, through representative institutions, in the government of the State. This so-called ascending theme of government was instrumental in the diminution of the power of the popes as well as of that of the theocratic kings. In England this process was greatly facilitated, if indeed not prepared, by the predominance of feudal kingship, which effectively tempered the rigidity of theocratic kingship and which was to a large extent responsible for the constitutional development, for the entrenchment of the common law and of Parliament as a representative organ.
In the period covered by this volume Europe was no longer a mere geographical term, but overwhelmingly an ideological notion: the unity of the Christian faith, underpinned as it was by the law of the Church, was largely responsible for bridging biological, linguistic and racial differences and for the emergence of a European commonwealth from the Orkney Islands to Sicily, from Sweden, the Prussian and Polish marshes to Castille, and Aragon in the Iberian peninsula. This commonwealth was not conceived as an economic unit. Its sustaining factors were the fraternal as well as filial bonds forged by the ideological amalgamation of the elements of originally Roman-Christian-Germanic paternity which produced common interests, aspirations and aims. The inner core of this European community in the high middle ages was religious and its structural organisation overwhelmingly ecclesiastical. Hence this same period witnessed the split with Constantinople, because its religious and ecclesiastical principles did not accord with those of the West, with the consequence that the whole eastern empire ruled from Constantinople was no longer’ regarded as European. The contours of the East-West tensions, of which we are the heirs, can clearly be discerned on the medieval horizon. Europe was what corresponded to the
Roman-Christian-Germanic assumptions— Constantinople and its empire were Greek and therefore outside the European orbit.
The crusades assume their special significance within the precincts of this EastWest tension. They began shortly after the formal breach with Constantinople (1054) and ceased to make much appeal by the late thirteenth century. They were the first large-scale mass movements which Europe witnessed. Military in conception, religious in aim, aggressive, adventurous and romantic in character and wasteful of man-power, they certainly were aimed at wresting from the Muslims the holy places in Palestine. They had also as a not unwelcome byproduct the conquest of Constantinople. which symbolised the militarily achieved subjection of the eastern empire to Latinwestern domination. That the direction and overall supervision was in the hands of the papacy, is comprehensible, though the execution lay entirely in the hands of the western emperors and kings. Nevertheless. the crusades also had undoubtedly beneficial effects : they widened the intellectual horizon of their participants and helped to break down the self-imposed western isolation by familiarising the crusaders with the riches of the East; they also put a new vigour into trade and commerce. Despite the wastage in blood, effort and good will, the crusades stimulated the crusading warrior and his leaders to look beyond their narrow parochial confines.
Within this central period there was progress in virtually all departments of public, social and economic life. New techniques were acquired both in agriculture and domestic industry and in the production of the necessary implements. Missionary activity was given a new impetus. when the north-eastern regions of Europe were converted and the missions penetrated as far as central Asia in the thirteenth century. New lands were opened up by novel methods of cultivation and thus made arable. The fairs and markets in western Europe became regular places for the exchange of goods. An orderly banking system emerged. The communal movement derived great profit from an elaborate system of taxes and tolls. New industries sprang up whilst old ones were developed.
In the course of the twelfth century intellectual advances made great strides forward. It was the time when some of the monastic and cathedral schools reached their peak and when the universities came into being. Initially specialising in either law or philosophy and theology, they soon had to widen their syllabuses. In course of time the demand arose for the extension of regular curricula, and by the fourteenth century Greek, Arabic and Hebrew were included in university studies as well as medicine and related subjects. The proliferation of universities in all countries, from eastern Poland to Portugal, from Scotland to Hungary, would sufficiently indicate that they were the response to educational and social needs. And the very institution of a university was a medieval invention: there was no such thing in antiquity and there was no model on which the medieval university could have drawn.
This was also the age in which a great many heretical sects—heretical by the standards of the time-—flourished..Means were devised to combat them, partly by persuasion through the efforts of the newly founded itinerant mendicant orders (chiefly Dominicans and Franciscans) and partly by the repressive measures of inquisitorial proceedings and tribunals, the execution of their sentence having been imposed on the secular power. Throughout the thirteenth century there were incontrovertible symptoms that the traditional order of things no longer satisfied contemporaries. The heretical movements were but one sign.
What the observer witnesses in the thirteenth century is a broadening of human perception, knowledge and fields of enquiry which resulted in a veritable intellectual revolution, notably through the absorption of the ideas of Aristotle. He opened up a new world, the physical world, in which hitherto little interest had been evinced. It was in the thirteenth century that the very term of ‘natural sciences’ came to be coined, and well-conducted experimentsas proper means of enquiry made their first appearance. Man himself and his nature became for the first time an object of investigation. Man was shown to be capable not only of conquering nature (a process that has not yet come to an end), but also of managing and manipulating his own affairs in public, that is, of governing himself arid through appropriate representative organs, his own community, the State. The thirteenth century might well be seen to mark the great divide between the medieval and modern world. It was the century which
precisely by making man’s humanity a central topic of study, gave rise to naturalism and humanism in all their multifarious and fruitful manifestations, in scholarship, in the arts, in poetry, in vernacular products, and so on. Above all, the concept of the institution of the State was born. Observation, experimentation, critical approach and the individual’s self-reliance began to replace the authoritative pronouncement by superior authority, with consequences which are still not fully appreciated. Man had been liberated from the tutelage in which he had been kept for so long: as a citizen he elected the government which remained responsible to him. Man and his State had become sovereign. This is one of the many bequests of the middle ages of which the decisive and formative influence on our own world has not yet found adequate recognition.
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