The Middle Ages: When and What

What is that period of time we call the ‘Middle Ages’? When was that period of time?

These two deceptively simple questions are challenging, in part because the Middle Ages is a construct. In history, a ‘construct’ is something which is not an event, not a place, not a person, and not a date. A construct is not a specific, concrete, verifiable datum.

Instead, a construct is a vague generalization which attempts to capture a pattern or trend among historical events. In the language of the mathematical sciences, it is a best-fit line.

There is a precise and unambiguous answer to questions like these: When was the Battle of Hastings? Where was the Battle of Hastings?

But a construct, like the Middle Ages, is rather impressionistic and does not admit of such precision or verification. As historian Irma Simonton Black writes,

The Middle Ages, then, was a time of excitement and danger, of isolation and self-reliance, of faith, progress, and much, much more.

Note that the concept is large enough to embrace opposites: medieval thought contained seeds of both free-market capitalism and statist communism. It laid the foundations for the zenith of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also for atheism. It modeled both political liberty and authoritarian control.

Notably, the Middle Ages took the Germanic structure of early feudalism and created a system which, unlike the previous Roman imperial system, imposed mutual obligations: the vassal was obliged to serve the lord, but the lord was equally obligated to provide for the vassal.

Attempting to give temporal starting and ending points for the Middle Ages is a vain task; author Irma Simonton Black presents her effort:

The term refers to a period of time of about one thousand years following the collapse of the Roman Empire during the fifth century (400 to 500 A.D.). Modern historians divide this era into the Early Middle Ages (until about 1050), the High Middle Ages (from 1050 to 1300), and finally the Late Middle Ages or Renaissance.

Note that she identifies the ‘Late Middle Ages’ with the ‘Renaissance’ in contradiction to numerous other historians. Such a conflict in definition will have no resolution, because of the high degree of ambiguity inherent in the concepts.

Debates about when the Middle Ages ended and when the Renaissance began are fruitless because the question itself is malformed. Unlike that Battle of Hastings, or the Coronation of Charlemagne, or the signing of the Magna Carta, a conceptual construct like the Middle Ages or the Renaissance cannot have a precise date.

If we cannot answer the question about when, perhaps we can explore the question about what.

“Middle” was used because historians used to think of these years as a time of intellectual stagnation which came between the high civilizations of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and modern times. More modern historians looked more closely into the period, however, and recognized it as a time of great and valuable change and growth.

In the Middle Ages, thinkers like Thomas Bradwardine laid the foundations for modern physics. The Magna Carta established legal rights for women.

Women in the Middle Ages still faced challenges, but had gained a social and civil status far greater than women in Greece and Rome. Scholastic philosophers argued that the universe was organized around rational thought, and that therefore it was valid to use mathematics to explore the observational and empirical sciences; they thereby set the stage for modern chemistry.

Although some scholars had used the word ‘Renaissance’ to intimate that the medievals were ignorant, they in fact had access to the large corpus of text which the Romans and Greeks had left for them. John Scottus Eriugena, for example, was carefully analyzing Greek text in the 800’s A.D., centuries before the self-proclaimed ‘Renaissance’ declared that it had ‘discovered’ them.

Questions about the ‘what’ and the ‘when’ of the Middle Ages will never receive fully satisfactory answers.

Importantly, however, it is clear that the centuries after 476 A.D. were filled with formative and influential events. Thinkers and writers established what would become the modern notions of mathematics, chemistry, physics, and philosophy. Artists produced works of lasting value. Engineers and mechanics developed significant machinery.

Writers during the Renaissance era attempted to cast the medievals in a bad light. They argued that the people of the Middle Ages were ignorant and superstitious.

The conventional image, which relied on generalizations, of medievals as oppressed and unimaginative has been shattered by research about the specific people and events who lived during these centuries.

Unintentional Mutilation of Text: Speaking the Written Word, Reading the Spoken Word

It is common practice to task students with reading poetry. They have an anthology book, or some electronic text on a class’s website, and are told to read various poems by various dates, and then to be ready to discuss, analyze, write about, or take a written examination about these poems.

This is the ubiquitous structure of literature classes.

In this way, students are exposed to, and hopefully consume, magnificent poetry: Longfellow, Wordsworth, Blake, Poe, etc.

There may, however, be something fundamentally wrong with this approach: poetry is almost always designed to be an auditory, not a visual, experience.

Among the exceptions are visual poems, sometimes called ‘concrete’ poetry, like Lewis Carroll’s “The Mouse’s Tale.”

Despite these anomalies, the vast majority of poems are intended mainly to be heard.

Would it be more legitimate for teachers and professors to assign students to hear, rather than read, poetry? With the ability to post audio files on the web, this could be easily done, and might in some cases conform more closely to the author’s intent.

By the same token, is violence done to written texts when they are transformed into ‘audio books’?

A novel by, e.g., Jane Austen or Mary Shelley, was written to be visually consumed, not auditorily. If a person listens to Middlemarch or Atlas Shrugged, rather than seeing the text, is the experience less than, or other than, what the author intended?

When approaching a text, then, it is worth asking, relatively early on in the process, whether the author intended the text to be seen or heard.

Ethics and Exodus, Morality and Moses

According to the dictionary, ‘ethics’ or ‘morality’ have to do with right and wrong conduct in accordance with set rules or standards. Often, ‘morality’ is associated with specific and concrete standards or prescriptions, while ‘ethics’ describes a more generalize and conceptual meta-level view of good and evil.

Often the relation between religion and morality is blurred and confused in the popular imagination, in part because they are intertwined in texts. While interwoven with each other, they are not identical, and the relationship between them can be loose or indirect.

To be sure, there are ethical principles and moral obligations that are stressed in, e.g., the Mosaic Code as it was revealed in the Exodus text. Moses gives, simultaneously, a moral code and a spiritual worldview.

But it is possible to disentangle these: a Mosaic morality and a Mosaic theology can be distinguished from each other. They are not identical, although they are connected by concepts like mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

Moses differentiates, e.g., between a murder and an accidental homicide, and reduces the legal punishment for the latter. He also addresses the notion of deterrence, hoping to prevent crimes rather than avenge them. He introduces, in some cases, a revolutionary equality between men and women.

Moses also establishes a legal recognition that a slave’s life is a human life, and is to be treated as such - not surprising, inasmuch as Moses was establishing a legal and social structure for a nation of escaped slaves.

Hit or Miss: Experimenting with New Forms of Religion in Response to the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution changed many aspects of daily life for a large segment of the population in Europe, and later in North America. These changes prompted changes in religious life.

Religious institutions found new ways to carry out their old tasks: education, care for the poor, and caring for the spiritual concerns of ordinary people as they faced the challenges of life.

As spiritual leaders experimented with new forms of caring for people, some of these attempts were more successful than others, as historians Hans Hillerbrand and Martin Marty write:

The Lutheran churches in Europe in the 19th century also engaged in what they called “inner mission,” the effort to tend to the physical and spiritual needs of the poor and downtrodden, especially those who had been marginalized by the Industrial Revolution. Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808–81) was the great organizer of this work in Germany. Under his aegis, the inner mission movement established local branches throughout Germany. Although the Lutheran churches thus ameliorated some of the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, they did not adequately address the vast demographic and social changes it had caused. The common people, therefore, became increasingly alienated from the church, which they perceived as being allied with the state.

In the city of Hamburg, Johann Wichern founded his charitable institution which still operates today, educating and feeding the poor, offering medical assistance and counseling.

Johann Wichern is also known for inventing the “Advent Wreath,” a circle of greenery laid horizontally on a tabletop, with three purple and one pink candle placed equidistant around its circumference and a white candle placed in the middle.

These attempts in Europe were parallel to efforts in England and in the United States, when Christian organizations like the YMCA and Salvation Army were likewise addressing the social needs which were caused by the living circumstances of the Industrial Revolution.

But, as noted, some efforts in continental Europe failed to gather momentum because in the mind of the public, they were linked, correctly or not, to the government. They were therefore not perceived as an authentic expression of a charitable impulse.

By contrast, the Red Cross, which was also started in Europe, was successful and spread quickly to other parts of the world. It was seen as a successful application of distinctively Christian principles to the new conditions of the Industrial Revolution.

When Civilizations Behave in an Uncivilized Way

The great trove of texts, sculpture, and architecture - along with the occasional engineering or military masterpiece - left by the societies of 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000 years ago is so dazzling that it sometimes tempts the student - or teacher - to forget that these cultures had a side which was not only dark, but sinister and inhumane.

“The ancient pagan world,” writes historian Michael Salemink, “regularly disposed of lives deemed unproductive.” The concept that every human life is valuable - the concept of the dignity of every individual - hadn’t yet travelled widely throughout various cultures.

Tucked away in obscure corners of Semitic societies, the concept of individual freedom and the concept of value of human life were still in chrysalis forms. They would emerge onto the stage of world history a few centuries later.

Despite their magnificent achievements in philosophy, literature, and other fields, the ancients were not uniformly honorable, as Michael Salemink explains:

Greeks and Romans routinely abandoned babies to exposure, disowned and drowned unwanted infants — especially the impaired or female ones. In addition, they persistently pursued fresh and more effective methods for aborting pregnancies — surgically and chemically — as had every Mesopotamian empire that preceded them. Popular demand for amusement pressed slaves, condemned criminals, and prisoners of war into service as blood-sport gladiators. The thrill-seeking public forced them to fight each other or wild animals to the death (popular not only with Romans but also in Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor). Human sacrifices — particularly newborns and captives — were often offered to heathen idols by Canaanites, Irish, and other predecessors of present-day European peoples, as well as Meso-American Aztecs and Mayans prior.

Only later, after the time of Constantine, would there be a wider trend toward what might be called a ‘recognition of human dignity.’ Until that trend, which flourished and became an intellectual edifice during the Middle Ages, a callous disregard for human life was common.

Classical philosophers popularized suicide in Greco-Roman civilization, not only accepting but encouraging it through instruction and example. Women were denied basic freedoms and deprived of human dignities such as property, employment, monogamy, and mobility.

Simply put, human life was cheap, and some lives were cheaper than others. Slaves were property, and their owners could with impunity kill or injure them. Women were also often treated like property. Prisoners could be killed for entertainment.

After the humanitarian trends of the early Middle Ages, which moderated these cruelties, society was still, to be sure, dotted with occasional holdovers from the earlier, more vicious era. Occasional instances of inhumane behavior, even at the present time, are sadly to be expected, and are to be understood as an empirical manifestation of that earlier era - as a manifestation of innate human nature which our current culture can only imperfectly hold at bay.

The Quest: Defining ‘Western Civilization’

Classes titled ‘History’ or ‘Social Studies’ often make reference to ‘Western Civilization,’ yet the exact referent of that term remains elusive. What is Western Civilization? Attempting to clarify, historian Jonah Goldberg writes:

I mean the thing both liberals and conservatives alike have celebrated for hundreds of years since words like “liberal” and “conservative” had any relevance to politics.

Indeed, the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ have a long and convoluted history, each coming to mean near its opposite at times. The direction on the compass is not relevant: the “West” is, first, a relative term: any point on a map has a relative location to any other point, but none of that has anything to do with culture, society, or civilization.

Secondly, the “West” was born in the “East” - Hammurabi and Moses, the two founders of civil law, were nowhere near Europe, as Goldberg notes:

the West has largely been defined by Christianity, but who can deny that? Though let’s not forget that Christianity itself was born in what used to be called the Orient (ditto Judaism).

This observation segues neatly to the next: whatever “Western” civilization is, it’s not something exclusively Christian. The word ‘Christian’ demands an entire discussion of its definition, but in any case, many individuals who are by their own declaration not Christians - those who are atheists or Hindus or Buddhists - have long since come to embrace “Western” values.

Part of the “Western” mindset is xenophilia: the fascination and affection for that which is ‘other’ or different:

even in the earliest days when Western Civilization was not particularly civilized, it was borrowing from other cultures. That’s a huge part of what makes Western Civilization so special. Sure, it’s got its history of bigotries, atrocities, and other sins — quick, tell me which civilization or society doesn’t? — but a central part of the West’s modus operandi has been to sift through what is best in other cultures and our own and appropriate it or modify it. The West, historically, has been more interested in other cultures and civilizations than any other. Celebrating our long history of open-minded curiosity and tolerance is not closed-minded bigotry>

Western society has a long list of failures and mistakes in its past, but it has demonstrated a dogged persistence in its effort to correct those errors. One characteristic feature of the West is self-criticism.

The willingness to point out its own inconsistencies and its own hypocrisies is a distinctive feature of the West.

The West uniquely rejected concepts such as torture and slavery - while other cultures celebrated them and designated them as foundational. But the West went even further: when it violated its own tenants, when it embraced that which it had declared to be evil, it exercised self-examination:

Slavery is a human universal, appearing in every culture around the world. What makes the West unique is not that we had slavery, but that we put an end to it because it was not compatible with our values.

It will always be difficult to define ‘Western’ civilization, but at least four points are obvious: an emphasis on the individual; an emphasis on liberty and freedom; an emphasis on self-criticism; and an emphasis on xenophilia.

Western civilization cannot be limited to territory on a map: wherever a passion for individual political liberty emerges, Western civilization is there. Wherever something resembling the concept of ‘property rights’ emerges, Western civilization is there.

Societal Development: Iceland

In many locations, like Europe and the Americas, a native civilization was in place for centuries or even millennia before the arrival of Jesus followers.

The inhabitants of Europe, with their light-colored skin and red or blond hair, must have been curious about the Jesus followers from the Near East who arrived with darker skin, darker hair, and news about a Messiah.

Perhaps these original Europeans were even skeptical or suspicious.

But gradually the new Semitic faith spread. The native cultural practices, like slavery and the buying and selling of women, were replaced with new values. The Jesus followers nudged the Europeans, and later the Americans, toward a society which valued each individual human being.

But traces of the ancient roots remained. In Europe and in the Americas, wherever gender inequality or chauvinism emerged, they were the faint echoes of those civilizations which held sway before the new faith arrived.

The history of Western Civilization can be conceptualized as a type of struggle between between two sets of ideas: the ancient paganism, which embraced slavery, treated women as property, and saw human life as expendable; and the new ideas introduced by the Jesus followers.

Iceland is an exception to this generalization. Iceland was uninhabited until relatively late in history. There were no permanent dwellers there in prehistoric times, and even in early historic times the island was uninhabited.

At some time in the 700s, Iceland became home to continuous residents. As historian Sigurdur Magnusson writes,

The first human beings known to have lived in Iceland were not Norsemen, but Irish monks and hermits (papar). As early as A.D. 795 we have an account of some Irish hermits staying in Iceland from February to to August. When the Norsemen came to Iceland in the ninth century they met some of these Christian hermits.

In contrast to other nations, then, Iceland’s earliest beginnings were shaped by the presence of Jesus followers. To be sure, some of the Norse settlers, who arrived a few decades after the first Irish residents, were pagans.

Some of these Norsemen brought with them the paganism of their Scandinavian homelands. Norse polytheism was thus introduced to the island and coexisted with the Jesus followers for a several decades.

The difference, however, between Iceland and Europe was this: Europe had been thoroughly saturated by paganism long before any Jesus followers arrived there. Iceland, by contrast, from its very beginning had a strong presence of Jesus followers, even if paganism arrived and endured for some years thereafter.

During its first inhabited century, therefore, all the residents of Iceland seem to have been Jesus followers.

While all or most of the European nations developed their separate and different cultures along similar lines, Iceland’s pattern was different.

In Europe, Jesus followers encountered a strongly rooted culture of pagan values, and worked to gradually make inroads against that social pattern. In Iceland, Jesus followers arrived to a totally uninhabited land, and could create a new social pattern without having to displace a previous one.

What are the measurable and observable results of Iceland’s unique developmental path? A report released in 2010 by the Obama administration’s State Department (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor) evaluated Iceland’s society as being at the highest levels of protecting both civil rights and human rights.

Likewise, a 2015 report by the Obama administration’s State Department (International Religious Freedom Report) depicted Iceland’s excellent record of protecting and preserving individual political liberty and religious freedom.