Light & Darkness | The Middle Ages
Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius; no less keen were their eyes, though they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom.
— Francesco Petrarch, Opera Omnia, c. 1367 —
The Rodonos was rising as the weather warmed and the Alpine snows melted. For days, the farmer watched as water gradually swamped his fields. His small plot provided food for his wife, her mother, and their three children. Without the crops, they would starve. The patchwork fence he had built years ago could not stem the rising waters, so he had to do something. He woke his two sons before dawn the next morning, and the three of them hitched a wooden cart to the strongest bull in the field. As sunlight filled the valley and shimmered off the river, they set off down the ancient path that wound its way south toward Massalia. The boys clacked sticks together as they walked, pretending to be soldiers like the ones who occasionally purchased a loaf of bread or stole a chicken from their father. The farmer smiled at their innocent play, wishing he could be as carefree as his sons.
After a few hours, they came to the top of a low ridge and saw their destination: an immense structure larger than anything the boys had ever seen. They dropped their "swords" and gazed at it in silence, their eyes wide. Though their father had seen it before, its size still impressed him. Small figures could be seen darting around the base of its arches while others climbed the smooth sides. The farmer tapped the bull's hindquarters to urge it forward, and the boys clambered up into the cart to ride the last mile.
Once they arrived at the base of the stone aqueduct, the man gave his sons their instructions: find as many stones with smooth sides, the largest they could carry. "These stones will protect our field," he told them. They set about their task, and the cart soon began to groan under the weight. The farmer nodded warily to other gatherers around the aqueduct, keeping an eye out for a weapon or a sudden movement toward one of his boys. But no one was interested in them—everyone was focused on taking stones from the aqueduct, which had run dry when the farmer was very young. They finished the work as the sun reached its zenith, and the farmer took out some bread and cheese for his sons. As they sat in the shade beneath an arch, the older boy asked, "Who could build something like this?" "I don't know," his father answered, "But they were from a greater time than ours."
The "Dark Ages"
During the Renaissance, a time when art, science, and culture reemerged in Western Europe, historians of the day referred to the previous millennia that had followed the collapse of Roman authority as the "dark ages." This term is controversial today because modern scholars have learned that there was a great deal of cultural development during the Middle Ages, but it was usually isolated behind the walls of monasteries or did not survive the political and social upheavals that regularly swept across the continent. The "darkness" that descended on Europe was certainly real in the immediate aftermath of Rome's collapse, when Germanic tribes from the East overwhelmed the crumbling authorities in Italy and established their own small kingdoms in Spain, France, and the Rhine River valley. Those who survived the fall of Rome or grew up in its aftermath, like the farmer at the aqueduct, certainly knew that the world had grown smaller and more dangerous than it had been just a few decades earlier—where once the mighty Roman armies kept the peace across the known world, now there was danger on the other side of every hill or forest. The ruins of great architectural works became quarries for stone to build homes and fences, and as these men and women gathered them, they must certainly have wondered what had happened to the world.
The defining work of late Roman literature helped the people of Western Europe adapt to these changing circumstances and, in many ways, created the worldview that defined the Middle Ages. This was De civitate Dei, The City of God, written by St. Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century. Augustine's message to those who feared the nearing collapse of civilization was to take comfort in their status as citizens of a "city of God" as Christians, and that no matter what happened to the earthly empire in which they had grown up, their faith would protect them from evil and guarantee them a place in heaven. Without delving into the theology of Augustine's book, The City of God quickly reoriented Western European society away from the earthly focus of Late Antiquity and toward eternal life in heaven. Whenever disease, oppression, or violence, struck a community, those who suffered clung to hope of peace and rest in the next world. They endured their trials in silent prayer, rather than seeking to better themselves and their situation in this life.
However, there was light in the darkness, so to speak, during the Middle Ages. Amidst the poverty, wars, and disease that defined this millennia of human history, men and women worked to preserve what they could of what the Greeks once called the Eudaemonia, the "good life," and strove to bring hope to their communities. The Middle Ages are far too complex to summarize in fifteen minutes, so today we want to share some contrasting visions of light and darkness during this period and demonstrate that even in the toughest of times, humanity has the strength and the will to persevere and progress.
Medieval Daily Life
Most of the medieval period was dominated by a complex series of relationships between social classes known as "feudalism." Medieval society was strictly divided into three groups: those who prayed, the clergy; those who fought, the nobility; and those who worked, the peasantry. A sub-class of peasants were known as "serfs," men and women who were bound to the soil in service to their feudal masters. Serfs lived in small cottages outside a castle or manor, and they worked the land and gave its first-fruits to their lords in return for protection from danger. In time of war, they fought as men-at-arms in the lords' armies. In a legal sense, they were little more than chattel slaves—they could not leave the manor without the lord's consent, their children were his property, and the lord could demand services from them for free until they reached adulthood.
However, feudal serfs did have some rights, which showed that the medieval period was not defined only by cruelty and oppression. These rights differed by region across Europe, and some serfs were more free than others. To cite just one example, if a serf in England escaped the manor and reached a neighboring town, he became free if he could evade those sent to capture him for a year and a day; in Germany, however, escaped serfs lived in fear of recapture and return for ten years. The Roman Catholic Church protected serfs' rights by various papal and clerical edicts. A serf's cottage was inviolable unless his feudal lord could prove to the local priest that he had broken the law. Similarly, serfs could not be dispossessed of their property unless they had been convicted of a crime. Their right to protection from invading armies and to food provided by the lord in times of famine were also enshrined in canon law. In short, the relationship between lord and serf, though woefully one-sided, laid the foundations for what later generations would call the "social contract" between the government and the governed, which has become the staple of modern popular regimes.
Medieval Women
As in Rome before, women in medieval Europe were subject to their husbands and fathers, and the vast majority of the "fairer sex" spent their days in the home tending to their children's needs and performing domestic chores like cooking, sewing, and cleaning. Peasant women who were the wives of freeholders—meaning that their husbands owned land—could inherit his property in most European countries, but this land then passed into the hands of their eldest son when he reached adulthood. Widowed serfs could not inherit, and the cottage usually passed back into the lord's hands on the death of a male serf. The patriarchal society in medieval Europe was very strict, and most women possessed few rights of their own.
The most prominent and well-known example of a peasant woman attaining fame and freedom was Jeanne d'Arc, known to English speakers as Joan of Arc, who led the armies of France for three years during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). After claiming to have received visions from God, Joan traveled to the royal court and met with the Dauphin Charles, later King Charles VII. She convinced him to give her an army, and she won a spectacular victory over the English at Orléans. Her career then took her to battlefields across northern France, where the presence of the "Maid of Orléans" inspired French soldiers to win one victory after another against their English enemies. When she was captured in 1430 at Compiègne, Charles tried desperately to free her, but her English captors would not set her free. She was charged with heresy and witchcraft, put on trial in Rouen, and burned at the stake. Her fate enraged the French people, and they pressed on in her name to win the war and expel the English from France once and for all. She remains a national symbol of France, declared so by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, and she was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.
Women from the noble class fared better than peasants. Isabella I of Castile became perhaps the most powerful pre-modern woman to rule a nation alongside her husband, King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and Queen consort of France, was one of the most powerful women of the High Middle Ages. She spent much of her fortune patronizing the arts, commissioning works by some of the best medieval writers and artists, including Chrétien of Troyes, who wrote a number of pieces that defined the modern perception of the legends of King Arthur. Two women shaped the theology and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church during the Late Middle Ages. St. Catherine of Sienna defined the experiential mystic beliefs of the period and also served as a peace emissary for Pope Gregory IX. St. Teresa of Ávila, born to a wealthy Spanish noble family and a medieval "celebrity" of sorts in her youth, became a mystic and traveled across Europe to encourage monastic reforms in various abbeys and nunneries. Both Catherine and Teresa were named "Doctors of the Church" in recognition of their contributions to Catholic doctrine and spirituality.
The Medieval Church
St. Augustine's The City of God shifted the Western Church's position in medieval Europe. Because it held the keys to heaven, it became the central institution for all European Christians, whether clergy, noble, or peasant. Tragically, some Church leaders—though not all, and probably not even a majority—used this new supremacy in the affairs of mankind for corrupt purposes. Clergymen levied taxes disguised as "tithes" to build lavish palaces and immense cathedrals, even when their parishioners could not feed themselves or their families. They altered and degraded the simple teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles about faith and service to one's fellow man and turned Christianity into an oppressive authoritarian regime under many popes. The Church sanctioned wars across Europe and in the Near East, leading to crusades that took millions of lives. Those who criticized this corruption and urged a return to scriptural teachings suffered horrific persecution at the hands of inquisitors for their "heresy." For Christians of any church or denomination, the medieval Church was surely the darkest time in the history of their faith.
And yet, the Church also preserved the Scriptures and its fundamental truths during these turbulent centuries. Scholars copied whole books of the Bible and, eventually, translated them from Latin into the vernacular—which became the foundation of all modern versions of Holy Scripture. The cathedrals themselves became tools of evangelism. Their stained-glass windows, marvelous works of art that they were, also depicted stories from the Bible and the lives of saints that taught commoners sitting in the pews the simple truth of Christ's sacrifice for their sins. Even in darkness, the light of God's truth shone brightly.
Medieval Politics
Much of the history of the Middle Ages that has been preserved is political in nature, as kings and princes wished to record their actions for posterity. These centuries were some of the most trying times for humanity, filled with war, conquest, and death. Some rulers fought over land and titles, and others battled each other over religious and spiritual disputes. Emperor Charlemagne, probably the greatest ruler of the medieval period, extended his kingdom across France, western Germany, and northern Italy by waging what he called "wars of evangelism." He imposed Christianity at the point of the sword, converting pagans to the true faith on pain of death. Whenever a tribe or province was found to be practicing their old beliefs, his soldiers massacred the heretics on his orders. During the Late Middle Ages, crusades against the Muslims, Jews, and Cathars abounded, filling the pages of medieval history with the blood of innocents and guilty alike.
But once again, there was some good amidst this evil. Many rulers spent money gained in war on peaceful endeavors like education and public works—though this by no means excuses the cruelty and barbarity of their actions on the battlefield. Charlemagne's education reforms and support for scholars preserving ancient and classical texts ushered in the brief "Carolingian renaissance" that brought the light of knowledge and science back to Western Europe. Sadly, this light flickered out as his grandchildren fought each other for power, but many works from this period survive thanks to Charlemagne's financial and moral support for scientists, artists, and philosophers. As we have recounted in an earlier episode, the Crusades themselves helped to end the Middle Ages and bring about the Renaissance and revival of European culture. The knowledge brought back to Europe from the East, both academic and practical, enriched the lives of millions, and the plundered wealth allowed peasants to free themselves from the shackles of feudalism and begin to improve their own lives.
Learning from History
What do the Middle Ages teach us in a world that could not be more distant from the poverty and death of such a time? Simple lessons such as the depravity of man, the danger of power, and the destructiveness of war are self-evident. But there is a deeper lesson, and it involves a return to the farmer whose story opened this episode. We live in a world that is filled with physical and digital wonders beyond anything the Romans could have conceived. Our lives are defined by luxury, by free time, by leisure that allows us to pursue our interests without fear of hunger or—at least until recently—disease. Both the events of 2020 and a study of the Middle Ages teach us that nothing in society is eternal, that disaster can strike at any time, and that we must cherish the world we live in. We must work to protect the institutions that sustain it. We must try to find light in the midst of darkness, personal or societal. And we must be aware that tomorrow is not guaranteed.
