What do we
mean by "medieval" times? Were these indeed "Dark Ages"?
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Actually "medieval"
is just a form of the Latin which means "middle age." It was never
a term that anyone living during those times (roughly 400 to 1400 AD) ever
would have applied to themselves--for they would not have known what they
were in the "middle" of. They could look back and see the lost Roman
civilization--which they were trying to hold onto and even recapture, to
whatever extent possible. But of course they could not look forward
to see what new thing history was taking them to. So indeed, "middle
age" was a term that modern people would later assign to those 1000 years
of very tough times after the fall of Roman civilization.
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We also know this
as a "Dark Age"--and even people living in those times would have agreed
with this as a label to the times they were living in.
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They were very
tough times. As the Roman empire lost its power in the West it was
overrun by barbaric German tribal groups coming from the northeast--in
wave after wave lasting a couple of centuries (400s-500s). Then from
the south through Spain came the Arab Muslims (700s). Then beginning
in the 800s came, from the north the Vikings and from the East the Hungarians,
Bulgars and Slavs. The attacks on the West--the plunder, burning,
rape, murder, etc--seemed like they would never let up.
The Invasion Routes of the German
Tribes: Late 300s to late 400s
What happened
to the church during these tough times?
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First of all it
is important to note that almost everything else Roman except the church
simply ceased to exist. The Roman armies disintegrated before the
invading German tribes; Roman government at the local and regional level
just simply disappeared. Whatever law and order anyone could ever
hope for was entirely dependent upon German "strongmen" or tribal leaders
who took over the land from the Romans. Survival depended entirely
on the abilities and the desires of one or another German chieftan to extend
protection to defenseless peasant farmers and their families.
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Surprisingly the
church was about the only thing to survive from Roman times. This
was because for several centuries, even before the onslaught of the Germans,
much of the best and brightest of Roman youth headed for the Christian
priesthood. The church still possessed much personal talent and energy
even as the rest of Roman civilization was beginning to collapse.
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Also it is important
to note that the Germans had no real desire to destroy Roman civilization.
Indeed they simply wanted to capture it, and were terribly disappointed
when Roman civilization simply disintegrated in their hands.
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When the church
proved to be more resilient before the German onslaught, the Germans turned
out to be fairly ready to accommodate the church in the new German order.
As long as the church honored the political role of the German chieftans
as overlords of the land, the church was not only tolerated, it was supported
as the one remaining element of the once cherished Roman civilization.
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Indeed many German
chieftans, such as Clovis, King of the Franks (French), not only converted
to Catholic Christianity but brought their whole tribes with them into
the new "faith."
Why was Celtic
Christianity so important to the Christian West?
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Interestingly
just as the Germans were overrunning the European continent and Britain,
Ireland (which, as an island further to the West of Britain, remained isolated
and protected from the German onslaught) was being converted to Christianity
by Patrick (early-mid 400s) and other Christian missionaries. Indeed
the conversion was so successful, so deep, that Ireland became the one
Roman Christian land that escaped the German fate of the rest of Western
Europe.
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Irish monasteries,
though isolated from the Roman
curia (the formal organization of
the Catholic church still centered on Rome), became major centers of Christian
learning and scholarship.
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They also became
points from which Christian missionaries were sent out to convert to Christianity
the Germans to the East in Saxon Britain and on the European continent
among the German Franks, Allemani, Burgundians and Lombards.
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Thus in 563 the
Irish monk Columba and a number of fellow Irish monks moved (actually
they were banished from Ireland for political reasons) to Scotland to establish
a new monastery at Iona--which in turn sent out missionaries to the rest
of Britain.
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In the late 500s
another Irish monk, Columban, and a dozen fellow Irish monks traveled
to the European continent to set up monasteries, first among the Celtic
Gauls and then the Germanic Burgundians in southeastern France. Eventually
forced out of the area for political reasons (the Burgundians were not
happy with the moral strictness of the monks' Christianity) they moved
on to Switzerland and then to northern Italy, setting up along the way
a number of monasteries dedicated to to teaching Christianity to the German
"heathen." Despite their poor political fortunes, Columban and his
fellow monks left a deep Christian imprint on the areas they touched.
But the Roman
Bishop (Pope) and curia were by no means inactive during this same period.
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While the Irish
were bringing Christianity from the West, Rome was sending from the South
in Italy its own missionaries--ones such as Augustine (early 600s; not
the same person as St. Augustine of the early 400s!), commissioned to bring
the Anglo-Saxon Germans in Britain to Christianity.
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Indeed by the
mid 600s the issue arose as to whom the Christians should owe their religious
fealty: to Ireland or Rome. In 664 the English made the fateful
decision to follow the more politically organized Roman form, leaving the
more informal, even spiritual, Irish form of Christianity behind.
How did the
Muslim Arabs further complicate life for the Christians in the 600s and
700s?
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From the Arabian
peninsula (between Africa and Asia) in the mid 600s a zealous new religious
movement called "Islam" spewed forth at the hands of Arab tribesmen--quickly
overrunning much of what was left of the Roman Empire in the East (the
Byzantine Empire). Christianity survived in the East--but now only
under Muslim tolerance.
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Unlike the Germans,
the Muslims were in no mood to convert to Christianity. To the contrary,
they began to press the conquered Christian population to convert to their
new religion, Islam. Many did. Within 100 years Christianity
was only a minority religion in what had been the cradle of the faith:
Palestine, Syria and Egypt.
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But the Muslims
didn't stop there. Their instinct for conquering and converting spread
across North Africa and in the early 700s into Spain, where Muslims quickly
overran the Christian Visigoths. From there Muslim armies then crossed
the Pyrenees mountains northward into France, challenging the Christian
Franks. But in 732 the Muslim tide was turned in a crucial battle
with the Franks and the Muslims were forced from France back into Spain.
There the Muslims dug in and took control (until they were finally forced
out of Spain at the end of the 1400s). But at least the rest of Western
Europe was spared from further trouble from the Muslims.
 Why
was Charlemagne so important?
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The grandson of
the Frankish general who defeated the Muslims came by his own rights to
be a ruler of great stature. Charles the Great (Charlemagne)
not only forceably united the German tribes across Europe north of the
Alps and even down into Italy into a strong, unified Christian empire,
the Roman pope conferred upon Charlemagne the title of "Emperor" in the
hopes that what was happening was a revival of the lost Roman Empire.
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Unfortunately
the hope did not long outlast Charlemagne, for his grandsons divided his
empire among themselves in three parts, creating the basis for modern France,
Germany and Italy.
What role did
the Vikings play in the shaping of Medieval Europe?
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At first the Viking
adventurer from the North were simply horrible "spoilers." During
the 800s and 900s they escaped the cold winters of the Scandinavian North
to indulge in the pleasures of rape, arson and pillage of coastal Europe--of
farmlands, monasteries and anything else they could get their hands on.
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But eventually
they came to settle the lands they ravaged--and entered into various political
arrangements with Europe's German Christian kings, even converting to Christianity
themselves in the process.
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The most notable
of these Norse or Northmen or Normans were the ones who settled along the
French north Atlantic coast (Normandy), became Christians, learned French
and became active participants in the political affairs of Europe.
Even after they settled in they still remained a powerful fighting force--even
taking Britain away from the Saxon kings (1066) and establishing a Norman
aristocracy in England that still exists to this day.
Why did the
Crusades (1100s / 1200s) begin to reverse the picture of a weakened Europe?
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By the 1100s this
Norman (and German) fighting spirit was redirected by the Roman popes into
a fighting force directed against the Muslims in the East.
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In 1095 the Roman
pope called for a new Christian "order," one directed to a fighting man,
a "Crusader," who would take a life-time vow (like a priest or a monk)
to be a defender of the faith against the "infidel" Arabs holding the Holy
Land under Muslim captivity.
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Thus the Crusades
were organized in the 1100s and 1200s to liberate by military force Jerusalem
and other ancient Christian sites in the Eastern Mediterranean under Muslim
control since the 600s.
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This was an enterprise
destined to failure. It succeeded at first only because of the burst
of enthusiasm of the very adventuresome Norman and German military elite--the
dukes, princes and kings of feudal Europe--and because it caught the Muslims
by surprise at a time of confusion in their own political circles.
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Ultimately to
make this a permanent success the crusaders would need a continuing supply
of adventurers, lots and lots of them, to counter the natural reaction
of the Muslims to pull together and throw their vastly greater numbers
up against the relatively small number of Crusaders who had established
themselves at Jerusalem and Antioch and coastal points in between.
There simply were not enough Crusaders to counter the huge number of Muslims
in whose land they had inserted themselves.
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Their military
successes were thus brief and their impact rather limited in "liberating"
the sites of Holy Pilgrimage from the Muslims. Within two centuries
the last of the Crusader positions was overrun by Muslim armies.
How did the
Crusades produce a quite different effect than the one originally intended?
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Contact with the
fabulous wealth of the Muslim East by the Crusaders stirred in the hearts
of the Western Europeans a hunger for the East's wealth. At first
they tried to steal or plunder the East's wealth--though that did not long
last as a possibility once the Muslims got their act together.
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But what the Crusaders
were surprised to find was that some of the Muslims were interested in
trading with Europe: the East's wealth in gold, jewels, exotic
spices, silks, and fine crafts--in exchange for the West's wealth in timber,
fish, wool and other basic raw materials scarce in the harsh semi-desert
environment of the East.
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Thus by the late
1200s trade replaced military conflict as the basis for relations between
the Muslim East and the Christian West. Trade had a wonderous effect
on the culture of the West.
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The Italians were
the first to benefit. At first such Italian port cities as Venice
and Genoa began to gather wealth in the shipping of Crusaders to and from
the East. Then by the 1300s they began to grow even more prosperous
from simply the trade of Western raw materials to the East and Eastern
luxury goods to the West. At the same time Italian banking centers
such as Florence and Rome began to grow wealthy simply through the ability
to transfer wealth in currency and credit between the East and the West.
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In Northwestern
Europe port cities such as Ghent and Brughes in the Netherlands, London
in England and Hamburg and Bremen in Germany also got in on the act of
purchasing and shipping the wealth of Europe in woolens, salted fish and
timber to the East in exchange for the East's luxury goods craved by Europe's
new rising political leaders.
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This in turn stirred
to life Europe's cities--long asleep or even non-existant since the end
of the days of Rome in the 400s. During the 1300s Europe's urban
population began to increase rapidly in number and in political influence--challenging
the feudal or rural aristocracy which had long dominated European life.
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In the mid-1300s
the European cities were so over-built, so overcrowded, so ill-equipped
to deal satisfactorily with the huge numbers of people that crowded into
their precincts that it was inevitable that a grand health crisis should
explode in their midst. Fleas brought in on the rats who lived in
the bottoms of the ships coming from the East, even as far away as from
China, brought the Bubonic Plague. Within the short period from 1348
to 1350 over 25 million Europeans died of the plague--including half the
population of England.
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Yet this did not
cripple, or even slow up the growth of urban life in Europe. The
Europeans bounced back amazingly from this great tragedy--and continued
on their determined way to the rebuilding of a new urban, industrial Europe
committed to the exploiting of its own natural wealth in its seas and forests
for the luxuries of the East, many of which the Europeans themselves soon
began to manufacture in their own cities.
How did this
economic revival in the West challenge its medieval Christian culture in
the 1300s and 1400s?
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Augustine's theology,
which had dominated the church since the end of the days of Rome in the
400s, which stressed the fact that the eternal heavenly life awaiting us
all was vastly more important than the brief and troubled earthly life
we go through, began to lose its power as the material wealth of the world
began to fascinate and energize the European mind.
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Contact with the
Muslim East had awakened not only a love for the material pleasures of
this life--but also a fascination with the poetry, philosophy and science
of the pre-Christian Greek and Roman world, one which the Christian West
had lost sight of during the Middle Ages. Fortunately the Arab Muslims
had proven to be more fascinated by the works of the "pagan" ancients of
Greece and Rome than had been the Fathers of the Church, who had either
ignored or even tried to eliminate such "pagan" influences during the last
days of the Roman era.
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Thus curious European
minds made their way to Spain or to Egypt to study in the Muslim libraries
and universities the lost writings of Plato and Aristotle, of Sophocles
and Euripides, of Zeno and Epicurus and other pagan scholars of pre-Christian
Greece and Rome.
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By the year 1400
we may truly speak of a period of rebirth or "renaissance" of lost classic
or pagan Greek and Roman civilization--one which many cultural leaders
of the day considered as being vastly superior to the long Christian era
they saw themselves emerging from.
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This can be seen
in the switch in the focus of European art from religious art to humanist
art, from emphasis placed on building great cathedrals or houses for God
to the building of great palaces or houses for the wealthy urbanites of
Europe.
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This can be seen
in the transfer of the center of European affairs from the business of
the church directed by popes and bishops to the business of the world led
by the newly rising secular rulers of England, France, Germany and Italy.
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The church, once
the virtual dictator to the consciences of European Christians, now began
to lose its influence, its moral power, its stature in European affairs--and
grew worldly and political like the princes, corrupt in its love for wealth
and worldly power, and no longer in touch with the deeper, spiritual heart
of European culture.
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Who or what would
now lead Europe forward as the great moral visionary that all societies
need in order to step up to their grand destinies? As the 1400s
rolled forward, many Westerners were asking themselves that very question.
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