The Medieval Experience: Foundations of Western Cultural Singularity

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The Medieval Experience

THE Itedietial EXPERIENCE Foundations of Western Cultural Singularity

FRANCIS OAKLEY Charles Scribners Sons

NEW YORK

—

Copyright Library of Congress Cataloging

©

in

1974 Francis Oakley

Publication Data

Oakley, Francis.

The medieval

experience.

Bibliography:

p.

1.

Medieval.

Civilization,

CB351.024

ISBN 0-684-13735-6 ISBN 0-684-13737-2

I.

Title.

73-19356

901.92

(pbk.)

This book published simultaneously in the United States of America and in Canada Copyright under the Berne Convention All rights reserved.

may

No

part of this

book

be reproduced in any form without the

permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

1

3

5

79

11

13

15

17

19

c/c 20 18 16 14

12

10864

Printed in the United States of America

2

To Siobean NiCureqn Oakley

fee,

h

hooks by Francis Oakley

The

Political

Thought

of Pierre d'Ailly

Council over Pope

The Medieval Experience WITH DANIEL Creation:

o'

CONNOR

The Impact

of an Idea

1 5

CONTENTS

Preface

ix

Introduction /

i

i

SPACE AND TIME The Shape of Medieval History / 9 The Heirs of Rome: Byzantium, Islam, Western Europe The First Europe and Its Confines: The Fifth to Tenth Centuries

2

Medieval Europe

Height:

at Its

The

Eleventh to Thir-

teenth Centuries

The Time

1

30

of Troubles:

The Fourteenth and

Fifteenth

Centuries

37

ii

CHURCH AND SECT The Role of Medieval

The Early Church and St.

Christianity /

45

the "Constantinian Revolution"

51

Augustine and the Doctrinal Foundations of Sacerdotalism

The Church and

57 the

World

65

iii

MAKING AND DOING The Mature of Medieval Economic Life / 73 Economic Contraction

in the

Early Middle Ages

78 vii

5

1

CONTENTS Agricultural Revolution and Population

Boom

83

The Commercial Revolution of the High Middle Ages The Dynamism of the Medieval Economy

87

94

IV

SUBJECT AND CITIZEN The Import of Medieval

Politics /

103

Kingship and the Gods

The Feudal

108

Contribution

1

Romano-Canonical Law, Representation, and Consent

1

126

V

REASON AND FAITH The

Direction of Medieval Intellectual Life / 137

Humanists, Lawyers, and Universities

141

Reason and Revelation

149

God, Philosophy, and Science

156

VI

PASSION AND SOCIETY The Texture of Medieval Sentiment / 171

The Love of God The Love of Man The Status of Woman The Love of Woman

EPILOGUE

175 183

189

196

/ 207

Notes

213

Suggestions for Further Reading

22

Index

223

Vlll

PREFACE

This book

more than ization

a

and

because

it

an essay in interpretation. As such

is

textbook

—

fullness of

less,

seeks to pursue

common

it

both

and

less

lacks the austerity of general-

coverage appropriate to that genre; more,

historical perspective that

the

because

it is

more publicly the fundamental issues of historians, by drawing unwittingly upon

stock of assumptions belonging to their era, sometimes

contrive to ignore. In writing the book, while keeping in

mind

the

needs of students in Western civilization and European history courses,

I

have

also tried

not to lose sight of that "general reader"

with an appetite for things historical but for cerning whose skeptical.

real-life

much

else besides,

become convey a good

existence publishers

While attempting,

then, to

to stimulate, perhaps I

wish to record

more

daily

deal of the

requisite standard information about the medieval period,

sought also to whet that historical appetite with

con-

I

have

less traditional fare,

even to provoke.

my

indebtedness to the president and trustees of

Williams College for a grant from the Class of 1900 Fund toward the cost of preparing the manuscript for the press. to

thank

my

wife, Claire-Ann, and

my

I

would

also like

colleagues at Williams,

Dudley Bahlman, Peter Berek, and Gordon Winston, who were all kind enough to read some of the following pages and to give me the benefit of their criticism and advice. The book is dedicated to

my mother, first and best of teachers. F. O.

Williamsto wn, Massachusetts r

January 1974

IX

The Medieval Experience

INTRODUCTION

Of the

women knew

Middle Ages medieval men and

they thought at

all

of their

own

an intermediate age,

as

one coterminous with the whole of human

When

nothing. it

was usually

as

an age strung out

history,

between the Creation and the Last Judgment, between

that

moment

all

of inexplicable divine generosity with which

it

had

first

begun

and that other dread moment of divine intrusion with which, they were told,

it

was

destined to end.

all

Of

the notion, so familiar to us,

Rome

however, that of a middle age stretching from the decline of

movements known

the rise of the their

own

impending

Renaissance

insert

antiquity

in the future. Instead,

and

both the

first

it

apprehend

was the humanists of the

Italian

own

age as

to characterize their

revival or rebirth in the arts

distinction

clear

a

for they failed to

discontinuity with the classical past or the discontinui-

who were

one of glorious to

Renaissance and Reformation,

minds were understandably innocent;

either their ties

as

to

those

in letters

between the era of

"medieval"

later

and

and the

classical

first

Roman

Edward Gibbon

centuries

subsequently characterized as having witnessed the triumph of "barbarism and religion."

The

very idea, then, of a middle age interposed between the world

of classical antiquity and the of humanist vintage. during

What

Reformation

the

dawn of the modern world was it

lost in simplicity

drawing

era,

it

added

ultimately

gained in firmness strength

from

the

Protestant depiction of the thousand years preceding the advent of

an age of moral turpitude, religious superstition, and

Martin Luther

as

untrammeled

credulity.

Even more

predecessors, the reformers restoration,

learning,

saw

though restoration

and of "good

original purity.

To

this

letters,"

this profile

their

clearly

own

than

their

humanist

era as one of revival and

time not simply of the

arts,

but also of the Christian faith to

of its

of the course of European history the

INTRODUCTION seventeenth century added the

American Puritan

its

divine,

own

touches; in

commented

i

70

1

Cotton Mather,

that

was upon the Western parts of Europe two hundred years was wholly swallowed up in barbarity. But when the Turks

incredible darkness ago: learning

made very

their descent so far

many

upon the Greek churches

as to drive

before them,

all

learned Greeks, with their manuscripts and monuments, fled into

Italy and other parts of Europe. This occasioned the revival of letters there, which prepared the world for the Reformation of Religion too, and for the

advances of the sciences ever since.

1

His words deserve emphasis.

of a middle age was

If the notion

present already in humanist and Protestant historical thinking,

was

it

well into the seventeenth century before historians began, like Mather,

back upon the beginning of the modern era

to look

already in the past.

It

was only

in the latter part

as

having occurred

of the seventeenth

century, then, that the formal division or periodization of European

modern became

history into ancient, medieval, and historians

framed

that

moreover,

division,

current.

although

the

When cultural

Renaissance and religious Reformation remained uppermost in their minds, they also took into account the

political

reorganization of

Europe, the growth of commerce, and the geographical, technological,

and

scientific discoveries.

that in

every area of

Like Mather they began to assume, in

human endeavor

that intermediate age,

which they

a great gulf separated

felt

had come to an end by the

beginning of the sixteenth century. In

German pedagogue Christoph

fact,

them from

when

1675, therefore,

the

Keller began to publish a series of

highly successful textbooks in general history, he organized them on the basis of a division of periods, the

European history into ancient and modern

With the wide disseminanew periodization may be said to have come

two separated by

tion of these textbooks the

a

middle age.

of age.

Of know

the Middle Ages, then, medieval

nothing.

When

men and women

they thought about the matter

did indeed at

all,

preferred to divide their histories in accordance with motifs of

provenance: into inspired

six

ages modeled upon the

by the Book of Daniel,

2:36-40).

The

last

six

they

biblical

days of Creation,

or,

into four world-monarchies (Dan.

of those monarchies they identified with the

Roman

INTRODUCTION Empire, control over which they regarded

from the Romans themselves

as

as

having been transferred

with which, therefore, thev regarded

to the Franks,

being in direct continuity, and which, they believed, was

destined to endure, in however attenuated a form, until the day of

when

wrath, that awful day

would

signal the

This

as

impending

dissolution of the universe.

bizarre notion, at least to us in the twentieth century,

last is a

accustomed

and

the inauguration of the reign of Antichrist

we

are to dividing our histories in less cosmic a fashion

Roman

to dating the termination of the

Empire, with confident

In that year Odoacer. leader of an

precision, to the year a.d. 4-6.

who

invading barbarian confederacy, deposed the youth

down

man

could

one

make

may

it

predict, will

be

later

medieval.

It

it

who from

centurv

centuries

that

was onlv

of the

— with

East

in

that

we

with the Turkish capture of

Byzantine Empire

an

to

end.

As

—Byzantine

of Constantinople

were

Roman been

had in a

settlers;

good

at

deal

Roman Emperor

grandeurs of universal authority.

bishop of

Rome

twelfth

continues to

this

(pontifex fnaximus), to claim, that

day is.

the very end.

to

pains

more

to

had

call

the

themselves

the discontinuities

insistent,

abolished

Nor

aristocrats

had come over with

West, where

the

other emperor. Napoleon Bonaparte, himself a to the

the

as

late

to boasting that their ancestors

of Holy

— the Roman

one-upmanship worthy of memorialization by

"Romans" (Romaioi). Even office

all.

American Revolution

classical past

monarchy; 2 nor.

have become accustomed to calling

that the

Constantine and the original

was the

fourteenth century,

as late as the

1453, after

—came

a social

been accustomed

with the

so bizarre a notion

own more ample perspective may we to appreciate the length and Imperial Rome cast forward across

than

shadow

the Daughters of the

citizens

was bv no means

their

Byzantium (Constantinople), Empire

a sort

ironic, bore the

be so bizarre to our successors, the historians of

equipped

better

significance of the

those

emperors, and who. bv

the very foundation for his treatise on

the distant future,

well

it

who

poet Dante,

like the

gone

once both improbable and

at

name Romulus Augustulus. But to a

Roman

in history as the last of the

of providential symmetry

has

only in 1806

— and then

more

should

to call himself

we

that

forget that the

"supreme

in his capacity as

by

credible aspirant

pontiff'

pope or head of 3

INTRODUCTION the

Roman

Catholic church the

title

of one of the ancient republican

upon which Caesar Augustus, two thousand years ago, erected

offices

his imperial position.

we

Nor, again, should

underestimate the degree

which, in the centuries preceding the Reformation

to

papacy

make

could

own

a

claim

credible

prolonged, in

its

empire that

was the glory of Rome

it

much quoted

Roman

observation,

to have created. In a

famous and

Thomas

"no other than the ghost of the

the papacy as

crowned upon the grave thereof"; an

empire, sitting

3

insisted, that

was no

fundamental perception for being derisive in

its

less

accurate in

of their

own

its

conscious intent.

made

All of this might well suggest that the claims medievals essential continuity

and

reconstituted

attenuated, religiopolitical version, the universal

must now be

it

the

least,

passage, the seventeenth-century philosopher

Hobbes described deceased

have

to

at

for the

era with that of Roman antiquity

were

neither as ridiculous as the Renaissance humanists once supposed nor as

we

fanciful as

them

ourselves have normally taken

to be. If the

same

cannot be said of the whole medieval process of periodizing history into six

ages or four monarchies, such theologically inspired schemata have

at least

one

do much

positive feature that should

to

redeem them

in

twentieth-century eyes, namely, their universality; for they purported to be divisions valid not just for the history civilization,

of a single country or

but for the history of mankind as a whole. This certainly

cannot be said of the familiar periodization that has come

from the humanists and reformers. are

still

It is

true,

histories

of other

civilizations,

to us

of course, that historians

Western

capable of imposing that specifically

upon the

down

periodization

speaking, for example, of

"ancient" India or "medieval" China; but as long ago as 1869 the

Russian

writer

Danilevsky

Nikolai

intellectually indefensible,

and

had attacked that practice

as

Oswald Spengler derided

as

in 191 7

"the Ptolemaic system of history," because in

made

to follow orbits

happenings," planets,

and

around us

just as the old

stars revolve

the turning world.

4

"the great Cultures are

presumed centre of

as the

all

world

Ptolemaic astronomy had made the sun,

around the earth

Spengler was

temperament than

as the

presumed

still

expressing sentiments that

no means foreign to other historians of speculative in

it

it

he,

his day,

point of

were by

men who were

less

but who, in a world rapidly

INTRODUCTION becoming one. no longer history

relt

molded

instinctively

that

different

civilizations

Western

history

to

comfortable with an approach to world the

make them conform

whose reassuring

and vastly

of other

histories

contours of

to, the

familiarity in

no way negated

a its

essential provinciality*. If.

then,

we

are to retain the conventional penodization and to speak,

book, of

as in this

that

we

'"the

Middle Ages." the foregoing remarks suggest

should do so rather self-consciously, with

many

a

backward

glance, keeping several important qualifications firmly in mind. In the first

which

place, the periods into

the course of history

is

divided are

not rooted immovably in the very nature of things; they are instead the creations of historians and. as such, are themselves subiect to change. In the second place, the traditional division into ancient, medieval, and

modern

reflects

preoccupations and prejudices

the

humanists and Protestant reformers. tradition so

heavy and

so

Were

very hard to move, modern historians might

well have chosen already to periodize their histories in fashion.

Even

as

it

is.

it is

a

very different

while retaining the conventional divisions, their

appraisal of the medieval period

inventors, and

of Renaissance

not the weight of academic

now

is

rare to see

much more positive than that of its the word "medieval" used as a term

of derogation. In the third place, the traditional division, unlike the theologically inspired schemata to

European and not

to

world

replaced,

it

history.

As

was conceived with

a result,

a

Mew-

"the Middle Ages."

an expression used to denote a period in history conventionally defined as stretching is

from about the fourth centurv

properly used to denote

a

Moreover, the very factors

to the

end of the

fifteenth,

period confined to European history alone. in the

modern world

that have conspired to

underline that limitation also suggest the desirability of ludging the significance of the medieval experience

from

a

vantage pom: differing

not only irom that once occupied bv humanists and reformers alike, but

from

that

used

bv

their

twentieth-century successors,

more svmpathetic nineteenth- and

too.

And

introduce the perspective from which conviction that has determined

its

that observation

this

may

serve to

book has been written, the

focus, the belief that has suggested

its

unifying theme. 5

INTRODUCTION Not

were prone

so long ago historians

when what they really meant was the history of "Western They did so without self-consciousness, secure in the the arena of world history the West possessed a manifest

"civilization" civilization." belief that in

whole

destiny, that the

Western

to speak about the history of

was sweeping

tide of history

irreversibly in a

direction, that the vanished civilizations of antiquity and the

seemingly moribund cultures of the non-Western world represented

uncompleted

best noble failures,

somehow

projects, inadequate attempts that

which

fallen short of the goal to

had been the

fate

West

of the

The

alone to attain.

past

no longer permit the luxury of

the

years since the Second

so distorted a perspective.

World War have

tion,

While

witnessed a steadv

Westerniza-

they have also witnessed some other changes, seemingly antitheti-

but no

much

less striking for that.

European

Though

the roots of change reach back

these years alone have seen the demise of the great

further,

colonial

countries, and the

empires,

emergence of the "third world"

the

reawakening and reinvigorating of non-Western

many Western

cultures and cultural forms that

observers, abysmally

lacking in a sense of historical imagination, were once as

it

events of the recent

acceleration, worldwide, in the process of technological

cal,

had

had aspired but which

all

at

doomed

While

to extinction.

at

one

increasing cultural homogenization.

world

the

non-Western

we

in

which in

live

to dismiss

m

an age of

one of mounting

live also in

become one and

has

for the first time in

which Western and

cultures are therefore in daily and Increasingly intimate

contact. This being so.

Westerners

we

unprecedented age

cultural pluralism, an

historv

level, then,

wont

to

escape

it

becomes progressively more the

fact

that

many

of our

difficult for us as

most cherished

assumptions, beliefs, customs, attitudes, and institutions are not simply

may

natural and universal, as in the past they

well have

own peculiar the momentum

but are instead the product of our

West.

At the same

quickens,

it

time,

becomes equally

as

difficult to

civilizations,

that

it

a path that led is.

in

effect,

it

to be.

history here in the

of Westernization

avoid the recognition that our

historv has indeed been a peculiar one. that at

our civilization took

seemed

some point

into territory

unique

— and

in the past

unknown

to other

unique, moreover, in

INTRODUCTION precisely those characteristics that have enabled

shape so

On

much

of

modern world

was notably

sociology,

and thought, he

life

Max Weber,

matter.

this

Our

clear.

dominate and

the

pioneer

great

of historical

Western modes of

characteristically

do not represent any natural or inevitable

insisted,

culmination toward which

to

it

history.

civilizations strive or

all

have striven.

They

represent instead only one very particular line of development, one

"A

possibility out of several radically different ones.

European

bound

studvmg any problem of

civilization,

to ask himself to

civilization alone, cultural

Western

this

and

civilization,

Western

in

phenomena have appeared which

(as

we

scope

is

ever easy to answer, but

it is.

I

in

into the last quarter of the twentieth centurv.

any attempt

to

like

believe, the

type of question that will confront us with increasing urgencv

move

is

the fact

of development having universal significance."

to think) lie in a line

question of

universal history,

what combination of circumstances

should be attributed that in

No

product of modern

answer

1

as

we

believe, too. that

an acquaintance with the history of the

it.

were

medieval centuries must necessarily bulk large; for those, after

all.

the crucial centuries that witnessed the slow formation of a

new and

specifically

European

had overtaken the

Hence which

classical civilization

has been written

it

the belief suggesting

medieval period

onward

—

Western

that

Western

focus, that of

its

—

the

belief that has

perspective from

cultural peculiarity or singu-

unifying theme, that

its

it

was during the

during the centuries from the eleventh

in particular,

foundations

cultural peculiarity

The

world history; the conviction

that of

is

the great disaster that

of the Mediterranean world.

the approach adopted in this book.

determining larity;

wake of

civilization in the

were

laid

on which the

was subsequently erected. This.

determined the book's

line

edifice too.

is

of

the

of march, suggesting the

propriety of pursuing a topical rather than a narrative or chronological

approach and. where

so

criterion for selection

many

things clamor for inclusion, serving as a

and emphasis. After an opening chapter, then,

delineating the broad

movement of

and attempting

up the necessary geographical and chronological

framework,

my

to set

approach

is

political

and

ecclesiastical history

indeed topical and selective rather than

INTRODUCTION chronological and inclusive. Successive chapters focus on fundamental

developments in tional

the

life.

In the epilogue

central

singularity,

question

which

raised but to have

8

religious,

it

I

economic,

political, intellectual,

return, briefly

concerning

was the

the

and emo-

and by way of conclusion, roots

distinction of

of Western

Weber

done so with such insight and

to

cultural

not only to have

force.

\

SPACE

AND

TIME 0&i

&0 The Shape of Medieval History

The Shape of Medieval History

The

known as the Middle Ages was shaped by many factors complex period

alike in their origins ships.

Among

certain

those factors, however, a

priority

attaches

the

to

by two great

fluence exerted tions:

and interrelation-

Roman Empire and

the

in-

institu-

the

Christian church. Both aspired to universality^

moreover, underwent

both,

dramatic changes during the course of the fourth century.

those institu-

and with that point

tions, then,

we

With

in time,

shall begin.

During the

first

Christian Era, the

two centuries of the

Roman world had

achieved a remarkable degree of

and serenity. Embracing

ity

as

stabilit

did

the whole of the Mediterranean world

and more, including within

its

borders

not only the heartland of the Hellenic world but also the more ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East, political structure

within which

civilization could

be transmitted

of urban

in

life

what we now

far

call

it

provided an ordered

rudiments of Greco-Roman

at least the

and wide, even

as far as the centers

England, northern France, and the

Rhineland, but which were then merely the outlying territories of an

empire that was essentially Mediterranean. Stimulated but

little

by

long-distance trading contacts with China and India, along the whole

of its borders the empire encountered in Persia alone a

mode

of

life

easy for

its

equate their to

regard

that

could recognize as civilized.

own Greco-Roman

its

breakdown of belief,

it

inhabitants, then, to regard the

destiny as in

civilization

some sense

the third century, while

was not enough

to destroy

it.

It

as

universal, to

with civilization

Even

succeeded

During

power and

was understandably

empire

eternal. it

rival

in

itself,

and

the dramatic

shaking that

that century, the empire,

already ravaged by the onset of periodic visitations of plague, was

imperiled from within by the chaos of

civil

war, endangered from I

I

AND TIME

P A C E

S

•

1

without by barbarians attacking across the northern frontiers, and challenged southeast.

reinvigorated Persian Empire exerting pressure in the

b\" a

Inviolate since

530

B.C.,

the city of

when Pompey had swept

b.c.

pirates, the safety

Rome

was now

itself

for the first time since 6~

momentarily threatened by invaders, and.

Mediterranean clear of

the eastern

of shipping in those waters came into question.

Xo

than twenty-six emperors came and went in the half-century from

less

a.d.

35 to 284, and only one of

z

If the

empire survived

at all

it

them escaped

violent death.

did so only by undergoing a radical

transformation. Survival and transformation alike were primarily the

outcome

the

of

energy,

drive,

and organizing

of two

skill

great

Thev

emperors. Diocletian (284-305) and Constantine (306—37).

took

precedents the emergency measures adopted during the years of

as

chaos and confusion, systematized them, and erected them into

a

permanent structure of imperial government. The peculiar compromise between monarch}" and oligarchy whereby Caesar Augustus three

many

centuries earlier had succeeded in preserving

some

of

the

abrogated. In

forms

the

substance of ancient its

place

familiar

its

the

to

burdensome bureaucratic

survival itself to regiment the social

throughout

ancient

state

Middle

seeking

and economic

all

a

name of citizens

court ceremonial

of the

and person of

From

cultivated.

Empire Diocletian borrowed the diadem, elaborate

of

East,

provinces. In the interests of imperial unity, the aura of

emperor was now more consciously

the

in the

lives

divinity that had long since gathered around the office

the

was now

republicanism

was erected an absolute monarchy modeled on

of despotism

centralized and

Roman

of the forms and

the Persian

the luxurious costume, and

Oriental

god-king,

and

his

imperial successors, though thev abandoned his policy of persecuting Christians,

were

in

no way disposed

embraced Christianity or to dismantle

its

That thev were

—

3

1

3

when

it

after

they themselves

apparatus. able to refrain from so doing indicates something, of

course, about the changes after

—even

to disperse the mysteries of the imperial cult

was

undergone by Christianity

finally

itself in the

years

accorded toleration. Diocletian had seen

the characteristic Christian refusal to participate in the public worship

of I

2

"Rome and Augustus"

not as the

necessary

concomitant of

a

— SPACE AND TIME

•

1

radically monotheistic faith, but as an intolerable threat to the fragile

unity of empire.

He

had sought, accordingly, to eliminate the danger,

Where

but without success. tine's policy

of

of toleration and favor succeeded

death in

his

persecution had failed, however, Constan-

337

from

transformed

Christianity private

a

sect

into

a

recognized in the person of the emperor

civic

its

By the time way to being

too well.

all

was well on

its

religion,

one that

supreme head on

earth,

one, indeed, that was increasingly willing to place itself at the service of

To

the imperial ideology.

whose concern Diocletian, the internal

for imperial unity

new

divisions.

divisions

the disappointment no doubt of Constantine,

was no

urgent than that of

less

cult turned out to be afflicted

by

its

own

obscure

Subsequent history showed that those doctrinal

were themselves

intractable

enough

to

raise

formidable

obstacles to the preservation or reestablishment of the imperial unity;

but that fact

itself signals the

degree to which the destinies of church

and empire had become intertwined, especially

when

in the years after 392

the emperor Theodosius the Great finally proscribed every form

of pagan worship throughout the empire.

Theodosius was the

make

last

emperor, however, to be in any position to

quite so ecumenical a gesture; that

emperor whose

to say,

is

he was the

last

rule extended to every province of the old empire.

After his death the practice, instituted by Diocletian, of dividing up the

onerous responsibilities of government between two or more imperial colleagues ceased to be an intermittent one. His

Roman Empire

into

two

largely independent of each other

and whose

diverged. If imperial unity long survived, fiction.

By

two sons divided

it

histories increasingly

did so only as a beckoning

the end of the fifth century, then, though

everywhere apparent, the

Roman Empire

of the

political structure

West had

the

Eastern and Western, which were

parts,

ceased to

its

legacy was

which we know

exist,

passed under the control of the several groups of

and

its

as the

provinces had

Germanic invaders

Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Suevi, Anglo-Saxons,

Franks

—who

had succeeded in breaching

its

frontiers.

however, the empire centering on Constantinople that Constantine

Byzantium

14

—

had

built

on the

site

In the East,

—the "New Rome"

of the old Greek settlement of

survived and continued to flourish.

The

old

Rome,

then,

The Shape of Medieval History had more than one eyes

we

if

we must

and

heir,

hold that fact clearly before our

Rome.

are to speak of the legacy of

The

Heirs of Rome: Byzantium, Islam,

Western Europe IN

when Odoacer,

476,

barbarian troops in Italy, the

German

the

deposed the

West, he preserved the

Senate inform the emperor Zeno

emperor would henceforth

West was no title

emperor is

that

suffice

longer necessary.

of "patrician,"

it

was

in

last

proprieties

when he

Roman Roman

A

and that

Endowed

second emperor for the

in return with the imperial

as representative

of the Eastern

The same Ostrogoth (493-526), who Italy.

theory the ultimate sovereignty of that emperor,

system of administration in

Italy

and

to preserve the fabric of

civilization.

however, led to

in imperial policy in Constantinople,

direct assertion of imperial authority in the

himself to have "good hopes" that

God would

the lands that had once belonged to the

through "carelessness," and mustering still

subject to him, the Eastern

5 3 3

to establish direct

North

a

placed his image on the coins and set out to maintain the

change

more

Roman emperors of a moribund Roman

Odoacer ruled the Roman inhabitants of

at least in

the

Constantinople that a single

true of his successor, Theodoric the

recognized

of the

by having

at

some sense

commanding

general

Roman

Africa, Spain, France,

ensued.

Its

permit him to reconquer

Romans but had

all

rule over the Italy.

since been lost

the resources of the provinces

emperor Justinian

and

a

West. Declaring

I

(527-65)

Germanic peoples

Over twenty

set

out in

settled in

years of fighting

immediate outcome was the reestablishment of Roman rule

over North Africa, the islands of the western Mediterranean, some territory in southeast Spain, and, for a short time, the

whole of the

Italian peninsula itself. Its

long-term

results,

however, were of a very different kind.

Devastated by the long war of reconquest and groaning

heightened burden of imperial taxation, Italy easily

fell

anew under

a

prey shortly

15

The Shape of Medieval History after Justinian's

bv

time

the

death to another barbarian onslaught, one launched

Lombards,

conquering the north of

The

Germanic

a

and

Italy

a

people

who

this

succeeded

in

good deal of territory farther south.

resulting fragmentation of political authority turned out to be an

enduring one. Not

Italian peninsula again united

retained control,

and of

under

a

true, of the

is

it

attack.

Byzantine forces

southernmost part of the peninsula

few scattered holdings farther

Genoa. Ravenna. Rome, and

government. Despite the

a single

and persistence of the Lombard

ferocity

century was the entire

until the late nineteenth

a strip

to the north, notably Naples.

of land connecting the two

But despite the presence of the imperial exarch

at

last.

Ravenna and

persistent hopes for reconquest. Byzantine rule tended in the course of

Rome, exposed though

time to become a reality in the south alone, and it

was

own

to the threat

That the

Lombard

of

attack,

had

to be left increasingly to

its

devices. this

price

should have been the case

Justinian

paid

East

the

in

is

explicable largely in terms of for

his

preoccupation

reconquering the West. His unrestrained commitment of

Western

resources to the pursuit of his

policy

meant

men and

that despite

repeated campaigns and incessant diplomacy he was unable to do

more than empire.

sustain a holding action in the

He

left his

with

much

danger spots elsewhere in the

successors to cope both with the Persian

menace

to

the east and with a persistent barbarian threat to the Balkan provinces

and

to

Constantinople

and the Avars the

Balkan

(a

itself

The

latter threat

was posed by the Slavs

people of Turkish origin), both of

provinces

in

numbers

such

that

not

whom

infiltrated

even

Heraclms

(610-41). one of the greatest Byzantine emperors, was able to exert

anvthmg more than

intermittent control over that region. After a

devastating

invasion,

making

a

Persian

however.

Heraclms

did

succeed

dramatic comeback in the southeast, defeating and

Persian king and destroying, once and for

all.

in

killing the

Persian imperialist

ambitions.

mav not leader who at

Heraclius's great victory

charismatic religious fiercely

independent

and behind

his

tribes of the

have escaped the attention of the that

same time was uniting the

Arabian peninsula around

creed of Islam, that

is.

his

person

submission to the will of God.

It

was the

who

belief of his

SPACE AND TIME

•

1

immediate followers, and of the untold millions

have since embraced Islam, that there was but one God, Allah,

Mohammed

and that

570-632) was

(c.

his prophet.

The Koran,

the

sacred book in which the revelations of Muhammad are collected, states

Romans have been

that "the

victorious in the nearer part of the land,

but after their victory will be defeated in a few years."

was only

enough,

it

Persian

alike

victorious

were

few years more before Byzantine and

to be a

overcome

Arab armies

by

the

that struck out

territories in Iraq, Syria,

Ironically

]

Muhammad,

of

followers

from the desert and seized

and Palestine. These provinces

fell

rich

more

the

easily because of widespread disaffection over the religious policies of

and Byzantine

their Persian

soon went the East.

Within

—had

way

The same was

true of Egypt,

of the other Byzantine possessions

a century,

spread

ship)

rulers.

Arab armies

—

which

in the

Middle

Arab

leader-

or armies under

from Egypt across North Africa and into the

Hispanic peninsula, destroying Byzantine control of the former and eliminating Visigothic

power

in the latter.

At

the

same time the Arabs

conquered the old heartland of the Persian Empire and were beginning push on farther into Asia.

to

By the second decade of the eighth century, then, Muslim armies in the West were beginning to exert pressure in the southern region of what we now call France, in the East were moving into the Indian Minor were mounting

subcontinent, and in Asia city

of Constantinople

itself.

This

last

endeavor

a great assault

failed,

on the

and by the tenth

Roman Empire was to reach new heights of strength. new great power had clearly emerged, an Arab empire,

century the East Nonetheless, a

which at

in the territories

it

had absorbed had entered into an inheritance

once both Greco-Roman and Persian and which,

centuries,

was

to give birth to the civilization

known

the greater part of the Middle Ages, then, there

claimants to the

were spared

into the fell

18

inheritance.

During

as Islamic.

were no

less

that time,

Roman and

Having made

a

doldrums once more

Islamic empires

During

than three

though they

in part the repeated barbarian attacks that ravaged

Europe, the East vicissitudes.

Roman

in the following

western

did suffer their

own

magnificent recovery, Byzantium slipped in the late eleventh

and twelfth centuries,

under the control of Frankish Crusaders

for

a

time

in

the

The Shape of Medieval History

Justinian's Empire, 565 A.D. Added, 527-565

From

C. Harold King, Arthur J. May, and Arnold Fletcher, History of Civilization (New York: Scribners, 1969), p. 182.

A

thirteenth,

and,

succumbed

to the

part,

having

Ottoman Turks

having lapsed

prey on

its

first

harried

a

in 1453.

into political

and

The

independence,

Islamic Empire, for

waves of Turkish and Mongol invaders

own, showed much

less

affinity

its

religious disunity, later fell

who, while they readily embraced Islam and made

their

finally

periphery to the attacks of the Western Crusaders and in

heartland, to successive ple

regained

for

the

its

its

—peo-

militancy

sophisticated

and

cosmopolitan civilization that had flourished in the Arabic-speaking

world and had preserved so much of the Persian and Greco-Roman cultural achievement.

These

vicissitudes

notwithstanding,

empires did succeed for the

many

the

Byzantine

and

Islamic

centuries in preserving and developing

type of higher civilization that had flourished in the ancient

Mediterranean world and had spread to

Middle Ages,

at

least,

Europe deserve, then,

its

peripheries. In the early

Byzantium and Islam rather than western to

be regarded as the true heirs of Rome.

Because of this, historians have sometimes deplored the sort of western

European chauvinism

that

induced whole generations of scholars to

•9

•

1

SPACE AND TIME

devote their attention so exclusively to the darkling plains of France,

Germany, and England, where

the ignorant armies of semibarbarian

noblemen and kings clashed by what was

in antique, Byzantine, or

Islamic terms the darkest of cultural nights. But without approving the

an

instinct that betrayed these scholars into adopting so provincial

approach to the early medieval centuries,

who

render the verdict that those

possible in retrospect to

it is

adopted

it

were doing the

right

thing, if not necessarily for the right reasons.

Without denying

the classical inheritance of

Byzantium or

Islam,

without questioning the importance of their cultural achievement, without minimizing their legacy to the modern world

—the former

Russia, especially, the latter to a vast area of the globe stretching

Nigeria to Indonesia and Yugoslavia to insist that

neither

came near

arena of world history that grasp.

Unlike the West,

it

become

was

neither

to be the fate

came

Whatever

subjects,

else the histories

cultural

singularity not in

necessary to

of the

West

alone to

the

and

even

now when

histories universal in

once more upon that most

history

of western

Europe.

of Byzantium and Islam mighf have to

they certainly suggest that

us,

is

led historians,

global in their impact

of academic

it

near to reshaping the course of

their aspirations, to focus their attention

traditional

—

from

to playing the extraordinary role in the

world history to the degree that has events have

Chad

still

to

its

tell

we must

seek the roots of the West's

classical

inheritance alone, or in the

Renaissance revival of that inheritance, but in what actually happened in

Europe

itself

during the Middle Ages and even during the confusion

of that early phase to which in the fourteenth century Petrarch helped attach the negative connotations

Dark Ages."

It is

that the rest

of

to

Europe

itself,

this

chapter

is

summed up

in the derisive title "the

then, and largely to western Europe,

devoted, the course of medieval history

being divided for purposes of convenience into three subperiods.

20

The Shape of Medieval History

The First Europe and Its Confines: The Fifth to Tenth Centuries

THE

immediate problem confronting the would-be historian of

fifth-century

Europe

is

that

did not exist as anything

Europe did not

more than

as yet exist; that

it

to say,

it

a geographical expression denoting

the northwest prolongation of the Eurasian continent.

Empire,

is

The Roman

should not be forgotten, was a Mediterranean rather than a

European power. England, the Rhineland, and even much of France

were peripheral appendages of the Romanized Mediterranean world. Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, the

now Germany, and boundaries. failure

empire failure

As

Low

Countries,

the greater part of eastern

a result, the

Europe

much of what all

lay outside

is

its

emergence of Europe presupposed the

of attempts to preserve or to reconstitute the unity either of the as a

whole or of the

Roman Empire

was determined during

this early

of the West; and that

period by three successive

waves of barbarian invasions.

The

first

of these was triggered in Outer Mongolia during the

course of the fourth century by a confederation of warlike nomads,

who, by sponsoring the displacement of neighboring peoples, generated in turn the westward the latter

movement of other nomadic tribes. Among to be known in Europe as the

were the people who came

Huns and who succeeded

either in subjugating or in terrorizing the

Germanic peoples occupying

the territory stretching from the Rhine

and Danube frontiers of the empire eastward

The Hunnic

as far as southern Russia.

confederacy broke up in the mid-fifth century, but not

had generated the movement into the empire, from 375 onward, of a whole series of Germanic peoples. Though their initial before

it

objective

was

to seek safety

from the dreaded Huns behind the imperial

borders, they eventually obliterated those very borders and destroyed the unity of the Mediterranean world. In so doing, however, they cannot be said to have substituted

unity that was specifically "European." Slavic peoples gradually into the

any

moved

regions of eastern Europe vacated by the Germans, the

Scandinavian lands to the north and the Celtic lands of the

far

west 2

I

continued to go their

own

SPACE AND TIME

•

1

ways, and a veritable mosaic of Germanic

Roman

successor states replaced the several dioceses into which the

Empire of the West had been

divided. Principal

among

were the Ostrogothic kingdom comprised of

states

those successor

Italy

and

parts of

what are now Switzerland and Austria, the Visigothic kingdom France, the Rhineland, and part of the Netherlands.

kingdoms and

culture as yet united these disparate

was evangelized

Ireland

onward

No common Though

peoples.

only during the

as early as the fifth century,

four centuries from the sixth

did the Anglo-Saxons, continental

come

Saxons, Franks, Frisians, Thuringians, Scandinavians, and Slavs

embrace

to

The

Christianity.

conversion early in the sixth century of

Clovis, the Frankish king, meant,

Germanic successor even

this

states

it is

true, that

Roman

all

at least

of the great

of Rome had become formally Christian; but

did not necessarily serve to unite

loyalty of their

in

much of

Spain and Portugal, and the Frankish kingdom which included

Only

subjects.

them or

to

win

for

them the

the Franks had accepted the

Catholic form of Christianity espoused by those subjects; the others

had been evangelized by missionaries adhering to Arianism,

heresy

a

concerning the Trinitarian doctrine, and the heterodoxy of their in fact

widened the gulf that divided them from

their

orthodox

beliefs

Roman

subjects.

Moreover, religion

aside, not

even

served fully to unite the invaders.

they differed not

least in the

their

common Germanic

Whatever

their shared inheritance,

degree to which on entering the empire

they had already embraced the rudiments of

Roman

It is

moved by any "European,"

that

of ambition

sort

can

that

properly

and

be

entitled

more Romanized among them should be

the

civilization,

Theodoric the Ostrogoth, bearer of the imperial

senator,

Roman

understandable, then, that they should not have been

concerned with the preservation of Roman like

were

culture or

already motivated by admiration for the splendors of the

achievement.

stock

patrician,

should

reestablishing the empire of the

and that a titles

man

of consul,

even have toyed with the idea of

West, though

this

time under the rule

of a Germanic king.

Any was 22

hope that he or

his successors

shattered, of course,

by

might have succeeded

Justinian's

own

in so

doing

attempt to restore the

The Shape of Medieval History unity of the empire as a whole, an attempt that

England, France, and most of Visigothic Spain

fell

short of lay

still

its

goals.

beyond the

confines of the reconstituted empire, and the second of the three waves

of barbarian invasions did

much

to render abortive

even the limited

degree of success that his prolonged campaigns in the

That second wave occurred

achieve.

West

did

shortly after Justinian's death,

bringing the Avars into the Balkan provinces, turning the attention of

from the

his successors

tribulations of the

Western reconquest

to the

heartland of the Eastern empire and to the safety of Constantinople itself.

At

the

same time,

it

brought the Lombards into

Italy, shattering

the political unity of the peninsula and transforming the ancient capital

of

Rome

into a frontier

and tenuous Byzantine but very

much open

Whatever

else

it

it

West would

—leaving

at the

very end of the long

lines

of communication,

difficult to reinforce

to the danger of did,

certainly ensured that in the

town

this

renewed Lombard

attack.

second wave of barbarian invasions

any future reconstitution of the

Roman Empire

necessarily have to take a very different

had in the days of Justinian.

from them the

it

loyalties

The Arianism

form than

of the Visigoths alienated

of their Romanized subject population and

have played a role in their

may

Franks of control over Aquitaine

loss to the

during the sixth century; but the gains involved during the next

century in their conversion to the orthodox form of Catholicism and their recovery

of the territory previously

reconquest proved to be temporary.

Muslim armies swept

across

Spain,

pushed the surviving Christian

lost to Justinian's

In the early eighth century,

defeated the Visigothic king,

princes

into

the

Pyrenees, and conducted raids deep into France.

kingdom ceased world, and

it

army of

foothills

The

of the

Visigothic

to exist, Spain passed into the orbit of the Islamic

was

left to

the Franks to grasp the future leadership of the

West.

That

leadership they did eventually grasp, constructing a universal

empire that not only embraced the greater part of Christian Europe but also

expanded the boundaries of Christendom eastward into central

Europe and into

territory that

had never been subject to Rome. Indeed,

under the great king Charlemagne, Frankish rule extended over the

whole of Germanic Europe, except

for Scandinavia

and England,

as

2 3

SPACE AND TIME

•

1

well as over the greater part of what had been

Roman

Europe, with the

exception again of England, the southern half of the Italian peninsula,

and about two-thirds of Spain;

it

some

also included

sort

of suzerainty

over the western reaches of the Slavic world in central Europe.

Though some

confusion surrounds both the event

was

intentions of the participants, there therefore, in the decision of the

a

itself

and the precise

certain appropriateness,

pope to crown Charlemagne emperor

of the Romans in 800, and in the subsequent reluctant decision of the Byzantine emperor to concede that

reconstitution at least in legal terms of a

Charlemagne have disliked the

to him, thus admitting the

title

Roman Empire

of the West.

himself, unlike his Carolingian successors, appears to

preferring to

full title,

call

himself simply "emperor"

or "king of the Franks and Lombards." His dislike underlines the fact that

whatever degree of Romanitas

his

from the Franks themselves than from bishops of

empire did possess derived their alliance with the

Rome and from the molding influence Roman Empire the Franks had

they invaded the

Roman

popes or

of the church.

When

been among the

Romanized of the Germanic peoples and among those most

less

least

hostile to

power. Though, unlike others, they had embraced the Catholic

form of Christianity, the later revival

alliance with the

papacy that lay behind the

of the empire was only cemented in the eighth century.

Indeed, that alliance can be said to have years after 75

1

when

come

into being only in the

the pope acceded to the request of Pepin

III,

head

of the Carolingian family and de facto ruler of the Franks, that Childeric title

III,

the Merovingian who, though powerless, retained the

of king, be deposed and that he himself be given the Frankish

crown.

That

alliance,

therefore,

postdated

the

evangelization

of

Germany and the reorganization and reform of the Frankish church.

The

owed their English monk

Carolingian family had supported these tasks, but they

successful completion to the

Boniface,

who had gone

energy and leadership of the

to

Rome

to seek authority to pursue his

missionary work.

monks English monks

Boniface had been both aided and preceded by other devoted

from

his native land,

and

should be so active in the

it

is

no accident

work of

that the

evangelization and reform on the

Continent or that they should enjoy the close collaboration of the papal

24

The Shape of Medieval History authority.

Roman

During the worst period of confusion

after the fall

Empire, Christianity had taken firm root

in

of the

with

Ireland,

church organization centered on the monasteries and church leadership monastic hands.

in

way

to

From

Ireland monastic missionaries had

England and had labored

made

to bring Christianity to the

Anglo-Saxons. In that work, however, they had

later

By

Pope Gregory

able to

impose

its

own mores and form

whole Christian community not before Latin

the

in

mission had been

of church organization on the

England; the

confluence of traditions

—

Irish

had withdrawn, but

Irish,

Anglo-Saxon, and

—had sponsored the precocious flowering of

that centered

—monks

the Great (590-604).

Roman

the early eighth century, moreover, the

pagan

been joined by

additional Christian missionaries of very different provenance

dispatched from Italy in 596 by

their

a vigorous culture

on northeastern England and overflowed

into continental

Europe in a dramatic surge of educational and religious proselytization.

Worthy

of note in

all

this is

not only the

educational, cultural, and religious

very frontiers of the old

vital

making

life,

Roman world and

surge of Anglo-Irish

its

appearance on the

beyond, but

also

encouragement extended by the papacy and the continuing relationship

the

close

between papal authority and the Anglo-Irish missionary

endeavor on the Continent. As bishops of the city that had been not only the old imperial capital but

also,

it

episcopal see of St. Peter and the site of the

and Paul, the popes had long since a

primacy of authority

was firmly

believed,

the

martyrdom of both Peter

laid claim, as successors

in the universal church.

of Peter, to

During the course of

the fourth and fifth centuries, a series of forceful popes, most notably

Leo

I

(440-61), had done their best to transform that claim from one

pertaining solely to doctrinal matters into a

primacy of

jurisdictional authority; but the

practice remained immense.

Those same

more sweeping claim

to a

gap between theory and

centuries, after

all,

also

saw

the transformation of Christianity into an imperial civic religion, and, despite periodic papal challenges, the

Roman

emperors,

summoning

general councils as they had done since the time of Constantine, could

make

the stronger claim to be the functioning supreme leaders of the

Christian world, even in spiritual matters.

This remained true even during the pontificate of so active and

25

WT^J pS

*~

> KINGDOM^-s.^

Cj>-w .

Kingdom

of

Charlemagne. 768

Acquired by Charlemagne

Areas tributary ij

to

to

814

Charlemagne's Empire

Byzantine Empire

From

Ernest John Knapton, France:

(New

An

Interpretive History

York: Scribners, 1971),

p. 24.

The Shape of Medieval History distinguished a pope as

Gregory the Great, and

of the Byzantine hold on the conquered Western

frailty

As

already becoming evident.

Rome, Gregory had had effective imperial

supervise the

and

it

and

buy

survived even the protection.

As

territories

was

in the

to negotiate with the

surviving at

absence of

Lombards and

to

administration of the city, marshaling the resources

civil

to

the

official

upon himself

reorganizing

its

landholdings throughout Italy

Romans,

Sicily in a desperate attempt to feed the

soldiers,

to

pay the

off the invaders; but imperial influence at

Lombard

befitted a

empire was almost in

to take

government

Roman church by

of the

the leading civilian

when

time

at a

Rome

invasions and the actual demise of imperial

former

civil servant,

Gregory's loyalty to the

His pontificate marks no

instinctive.

definite break

pattern of subservience that had usually characterized the

the

relationship of the popes with the Byzantine emperors, and, as late as

663, the emperor could

pertaining to

To then,

its

visit

Rome

and be accorded

all

the honors

lawful ruler.

the inhabitants of the provinces

Gregory and

papal

his

remained leading dignitaries

in

still

subject to Byzantine rule,

successors for a century

what was

still

and more

an imperial church.

To

the barbarians of the West, however, they represented something different

and more grandiose. They enjoyed a prestige

that,

while

undoubtedly enhanced by the association of their authority with the

work of

Low

Countries,

powerful

Rome

evangelization and church reform in England,

— the

and France,

fact that to the

was grounded

new

in

peoples of the

Rome

and the mysteries of Petrine

mid-eighth century, then,

when

something more

West

represented in unique combination both the

imperial

Germany, the the bishops of

lost

glamour of

apostolicity.

In

the

the rise of Islam had dealt shattering

blows to the empire of the East, when the Byzantine emperors themselves

had fomented a schismatic quarrel

in

the

church by

prohibiting as idolatrous the devotional use of icons and pictures, and

when

the

Byzantine

Lombards had renewed territories in Italy, the

their drive against the surviving

popes

finally

turned their backs on

the East and sought the protection of the Carolingian rulers of the

Franks. In so doing they

may

have hoped to crown the existing moral

leadership of the church in the

Western

countries with the papal

27

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