Medieval America

Townhall.com ^ | October 13 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Kaslin]

Pessimists often compare today's troubled America to a tottering late Rome or an insolvent and descending British Empire. But medieval Europe (roughly A.D. 500 to 1450) is the more apt comparison.

The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if haphazard, human achievement -- along with endemic insecurity, superstition and two, rather than three, classes.

The great medieval universities -- at Bologna, Paris and Oxford -- continued to make strides in science. They were not unlike the medical and engineering schools at Harvard and Stanford. But they were not centers of free thinking.

Instead, medieval speech codes were designed to ensure that no one questioned the authority of church doctrine. Culturally or politically incorrect literature of the classical past, from Aristophanes to Petronius, was censored as either subversive or hurtful.

Career-wise, it was suicidal for, say, a medieval professor of science at the University of Padua to doubt the orthodoxy that the sun revolved around the earth.

[grumpygresh]

“People living in the first millennium believed in transcendence and a soul, and sought to keep alive culture until civilization returned.”

This is a very generalized statement. Remember for the average peasant, life was harsh, brutish and short. Only the clerical elites knew how to read and few texts were available. Even emperor Charlemagne (800) could barely read and could not write. It would be silly to conclude that your average medieval schlub gave any thought to eternity when his entire existence resembled a Hunger Games episode that revolved around getting enough calories and avoiding torture and death from his master. Europe in the early middle ages (500-1000) was not uniformly Christianized. Large areas of what is today Germany, the Slavic nations, and Scandinavia were largely pagan. Even the French royalty did not accept Christianity until Clovis was baptized in the 480s, and that was because he saw a vision of the cross before winning a battle (much like Constantine).

True, great universities were founded in Bologna, Paris but this was much later in the 12th and 13th century corresponding with the erection of the great gothic cathedrals.

The early middle ages, and we would be lucky to have a civilization as such after WW3, has been described by some as a prolonged “western” with fights between marauding tribes, brigandage, raiding and general lawlessness and insecurity for the average serf.

[ClearCase_guy]

I’m with you. I respect Hanson greatly on the classics, but I’ve never considered him to be a Medievalist.

Question for you:
When I was a child, I learned this stereotype about the Middle Ages: You had to think all the traditional thoughts (Earth around the sun, Aristotle knew everything about natural sciences, Galen knew everything about medicine, etc.)

As I grew older and read more widely, I have seen little real evidence for this. I think the two big cases are Giordano Bruno and Galileo. Now, Bruno’s case is very complex and his embrace of heliocentricity seems to have been a relatively minor problem. His belief in many worlds was more threatening. Galileo was clearly a heliocentrist but he was treated very lightly by the Church.

In short, the idea that free thinking was almost unheard of during the medieval period seems extremely suspect to me. Do you agree? Hanson appears to disagree.

[Oatka]

Could it be high time for a peasant revolt?

Now circulating on the web:

and

[vladimir998]

“In short, the idea that free thinking was almost unheard of during the medieval period seems extremely suspect to me. Do you agree? Hanson appears to disagree.”

There was a great deal of free thinking in the Middle Ages - just not necessarily on the topics that people NOW consider to be of greatest importance or of the most scientific merit. The very way medieval universities conducted some of their final exams shows they cared about free thinking. Oral disputations were always part of finishing a master’s degree or a doctoral degree. You had to be able to compose arguments, think logically, show command of sources and be able to speak eloquently and convincingly on a huge variety of topics - including topics which were most likely created for no other reason than to be used in disputations. The old saw about “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” for instance may have been one of those topics. No one has ever found any evidence that that topic was ever uttered by anyone in the Middle Ages, but it fits in with many others we know about. When I was first a graduate student I assumed - like everyone else I had ever met - that that topic was a sign of how backward many people were in the Middle Ages. Then a professor painstakingly walked I and several others through it to disabuse us of our ignorance. He showed how, if it was used as a disputation topic, it was not about something fanciful at all but about very concrete understandings about science and philosophy. Can something incorporeal (angels) take up physical space merely by being multiplied in number? What constitutes mass? How do you measure volume? How is something made visible to the human eye? Can a living creature increase or decrease in size? Can something unseen by the human eye have mass or volume?

Years ago I knew a high school senior who was struggling with his college application essay. He had to argue two sides of an argument, pro and con. I immediately told him he should pick the topic “Is the class half full or half empty?” He looked at me like I crazy and said, “But it’s the same either way?” (i.e. the glass had the same amount of water in it no matter how you described it). I told him, “That’s what would make it such an interesting essay. You would be able to show them how smart you are by looking at the exact same set of facts from two entirely different points of view!” He thought I was nuts.

It was ONLY in the Middle Ages that human beings really developed the idea of the “individual” or “natural rights of the individual”. http://tinyurl.com/hwkttn5 http://tinyurl.com/jespz8b http://tinyurl.com/zukqd5b

Only a society with a lot of free thought could come up with such ideas.

[NonValueAdded]

OMG, I fear he nailed it.

[exDemMom]

Then a professor painstakingly walked I and several others through it to disabuse us of our ignorance.

However, it would seem your professor did not teach you about English grammar.

Correct: a professor ... walked me and several others...

Sorry, the incorrect use of direct/indirect objects is a pet peeve of mine.

[vladimir998]

“However, it would seem your professor did not teach you about English grammar.”

Not English grammar, no.

“Sorry, the incorrect use of direct/indirect objects is a pet peeve of mine.”

That’s okay. I cringe when I see people use possessives instead of plurals. We all have our pet peeves.

[Pelham]

Are you familiar with Stanley Jaki’s writing about the development of science in the Middle Ages? Based on work by Pierre Duhem. If not I’m sure you’d find it very worthwhile.

[ClearCase_guy]

I am not familiar. I’ll go look for it.

My basic position is that a great many very interesting things were going on in the Middle Ages. I think the era gets a bad reputation for being somehow “stuck” after the Classical Age ended. I think Europe came up with a lot of creative thought after Rome fell and before the Renaissance kicked in and got everyone focused back on the Ancients. I mean, I like the Ancients quite a lot. But Europe came up with additional ideas pretty much on its own.

[vladimir998]

“Are you familiar with Stanley Jaki’s writing about the development of science in the Middle Ages? Based on work by Pierre Duhem. If not I’m sure you’d find it very worthwhile.”

I have read books from both. It blows me away to think that Duhem’s works on the history of science in the Middle Ages are still essential reading 100 years after he died - especially his classic Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds.

[Pelham]

Pierre Duhem was a French scholar around 1900 who investigated the development of science in the Middle Ages, and his discoveries blow up the idea that the Middle Ages were a stagnant interlude before the Renaissance. Stanley Jaki more recently followed Duhem in that study so his books are still available. It’s been years since I read any of Jaki’s books so I can’t recall which would be the best... in addition to being an historian of science he was a PhD in physics and a Catholic monk so you get all sorts of things in his writing.

[Pelham]

I only know Duhem through Jaki’s writing. National Review, many years ago when it was actually a magazine worth reading, ran a book review on a book that Jaki had written on Duhem and I began seeking out his writing. I never did run across a book by Duhem himself.

There was at least one other National Review regular of, say, the 1980s, who was a Medievalist. I can’t recall his name even though I have a book by him. He was more oriented to philosophy and Medieval thought than science. But between his writing and that of Jaki I developed a respect for the Middle Ages that seems to have eluded VDH.