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THOUGHT AND CULI‘UKI: mslnu. CAM-l mlyxwgsvrung- ~
A ‘_$E-.LECTIV_E STUDY of THE- LITERATURE .; f; _ 3;.

Thesis for the Degree of M A. -
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Robért ‘Will‘riam Christensen. f ,.
.1969 ‘ ’ ”

 

 

 

 

R3“. J” 103E 05“ Y

5 A N

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

THOUGHT AND CULTURE IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES:
A SELECTIVE STUDY OF THE LITERATURE
by

Robert William Christensen

Understanding of early medieval thought and culture has
in recent years superseded the misconceptions of historians,
who since the fifteenth century have given minimal attention
to what they considered to have been several centuries of
'darkness'. This lack of appreciation for the thought and
culture of the early Middle Ages has in the past been in
response to the historian's desire to place his own age in
greater relief. During the Renaissance, Reformation and
Enlightenment the historian provided prestige for the epoch
in which he lived by contrasting it with the "follies" of
the Middle Ages. Historians of the nineteenth century
sought to establish a long and distinguished pedigree for
his nation by recovering and romanticizing the deeds of its
heroes in the medieval past.

In this century the historian has turned to the study
of the early Middle Ages with the hope of finding there the
laboratory data from which he can formulate cures for con-
temporary problems. Throughout the past four hundred years
historians have built a very considerable library from which

scholars of this and future decades will draw to round out

and mature present judgments of a culture that succeeded the
three centuries of turmoil associated with the collapse of
the Roman Empire.

Within the last decade historians have identified the
early Middle Ages as a distinct culture. The novelty of
this conception has and should continue to provoke dis-
cussion and generate research that will help to close the
still discernible gaps in our knowledge of early medieval
thought and culture. Some of the most serious gaps are to
be found within the specialized studies of medieval art and
philos0phy. Historians in these fields could be of great
assistance to early medieval historians of thought and
culture should they attempt to find a distinct art or phi-
losophy belonging to the early Middle Ages.

Thought and Culture in the Early Middle Ages:
A Selective Study of the Literature
by
Robert William Christensen

A Thesis

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTERS OF ARTS

Department of History
1966

PREFACE

What follows in this thesis is essentially historio-
graphical in nature. For that reason I have upon occasion
introduced the ideas of philosophers of history and of
certain historians with which I have little formal ac-
quaintance with but I think will be useful as background
material for the reader. If the background material
excites the reader's interest, the bibliographical essay
which appears after the text will give the reader indi-
cation of a few of those books to which he might turn.

Some of my readers may find the chronology difficult
to follow, and, especially in chapters two through five,
may become confused by the cross references to the many
authors discussed there. To reduce the seriousness of
this confusion I have added an appendix that gives an
orderly account of each of those authors by the year in
which they wrote the book or books discussed in those
chapters.

The writing of a text of this length would have long
ago exhausted my meager talents had it not been for the
constant encouragement of my wife, Karen. Perhaps an
even greater debt is owed to Dr. Richard Sullivan, who
has spent hours he could ill afford to spare in emending
the thesis of errors, and in asking me questions that

led me to a deeper understanding of my material.

TABLE OF

PREFACE. . . . . . . . . .
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . .
CHAPTER

I. Conceptions of the

From Renaissance
Century. . . . .

II. Conceptions of the

III. Early Applications
Interpretation .

CONTENTS

early Middle Ages:
to the Mid-nineteenth

Positive Historians .
of the Transitional

O O O O O O O O O O 0

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

Modifications of the Transitional
Interpretation . . . . . . . . .

The Early Middle Ages as a Unique
Cultural Enterprise. . . . . . . . .

Conceptions of the early Middle Ages
by the Historians of Art . . . . . .

Conceptions of the early Middle Ages
by the Historians of Philosophy. . .

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

APPENDIX C O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY. . . . . . . . . . . . .

ii

30

49

80

109

146

168
192
204
206

Historical writings are generally under aken to pro-
vide the author with a vehicle through which he might
present his views with respect to a certain set of selected
topics. To a limited extent this is true of this project.
It is true in that this author's Opinions have inevitably
Eeen interjected among its various pages. However, no
attezpt has been made to use this th sis to advance a
certain point of view. On the contrary it represents a
chronicle of the author's attempt to gain some insi.ht into
the cultural and intellectual life of the early Middle Ages
through reading in the secondary sources which reflect upon
this subject.

There is no need to defend the validity of making such
a chronicle, Lut it does seem appropriate to give the reader
an impression as to the method by which the chronicle is to
he presented to him. Since historians have been and will
no doubt continue to he influenced by the historical atti-
tudes of their predecessors, the first chapter endeavors to
present the disposition of historians since the fifteenth
century towards the early medieval period. In anticipation
of that chapter, the reader should be warned that until the
nineteenth century the early Middle Ages, and the Middle
Ages more generally were rarely investigated by historians,
and in fact were rarely mentioned at all except in a de-

preciative manner.

After the first chapter, which serves in the capacity
of an introductory exploration, this thesis assumes a much
different and more specific nature. The historians of the
past century and the themes they emphasize are presented
individually and to the depth they seem to justify. To
the extent an historian reflects a philosophy of history
that resembles that of other historians writing in the
generation in which he lives, each historian will be
grouped according to his generation. Chronologically there
have been three such generations in the past century, intel-
lectually there have been as many as three, or perhaps four.
It is about each of these "generations" that chapters two
through five are arranged. Within each chapter the order
in which an historian is presented, is often purely arbi-
trary, but behind the arrangement of each chapter is the
organizing principle that each succeeding historian should
be in some way dependent upon those preceeding him.

If it is true that historians of culture reflect the
attitudes of the generation in which they live, it may
also be true that specialists in art history and the history
of philosophy reflect these same attitudes. To find if this

is in fact the case will be the purpose of chapters five and

six.

CHAPTER I

ARLY MIDDLE AGES:

[11

CCNCEPTIONS OF THE

FROM THE REIAISSAYCE TO THE MID-NINETEETTH CEBTURY

Historical thought after the fifteenth century may be
characterized as a series of reactions to the recognized
conceptions of a preceding epoch. For the fifteenth,
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the epoch
to which historians, and intellectuals generally, reacted
was the Middle Ages. Inasmuch as each of these centuries
has a distinct personality of its own, ' it must be dealt
with separately, but it should be stressed that it was
against the Middle Ages to which the intellectuals of each
century were ultimately in reaction. Historians of the
nineteenth century were not nearly so inclined to measure
all things against the Middle Ages; they were much more in
reaction against their own predecessors, the "enlightened"
historians of the eighteenth century. Their reaction took
the form of "Romanticism", and it is with this intellectual
and artistic movement and its effects on historical writing
that the chapter closes.

As the chapter progresses it will become clear why
historians of the early modern period did not find the

Middle Ages worthy material for serious study. Each age

added to the reasons given by the 'humanists' of the

fifteenth century, further prejudicing men‘s minds and

drawing the attentions of historians away from medieval
scholarship. There were exceptions to this generalization,
and these exceptions are of great importance, for they make
possible the great advance in the nineteenth century, when
medieval studies were seriously undertaken.

Although The City of God is by no means the first
history written, or for that matter the first Christian
history Augustine does mark a significant departure in
historiography. Augustine viewed history as movement of
God's creation from its source to its goal. As such,
events in the secular world are obscure indications of
God's design, a design intelligible only when viewed in
the perspective of the Christological myth presented in the
Eible. History was for Augustine and for Christians of the
' thousand years which followed him cloaked in a theodicy
that made most events super-natural in meaning. This
conception of history was discarded only when the Renaissance
challenged religious authority in certain areas of life and
culture. Both the literary and religious humanists,

Johann Huizinga points out, "were permeated by a nostalgia
for the old primeval purity and an aspiration to renew

"1 Whether it was to return to the

themselves from within.
earlier age of the pagan or of the early Christian era of
the Apostles, the Renaissance man of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries wished to revive classical learning

 

1Quoted from Johann Huizinga by Page Smith, The
Historian and History (New York, 1964), p. 23.

as a means of turning himself away from the God-centered
universe of the scholastic to the man—centered world of
Pico della Mirandola.
Pico gave a classic expression to the new spirit when
he explained why "man is the most fortunate of creatures."
"To him it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be
whatever he wills." And this grant comes from the "supreme
generosity of God the father'f.2 Pico expresses in words
the thoughts and the exuberance of man concentrating on
his own and not God's potentialities. To find a parallel
attitude Pico and his associates turned to the ancients.
They recognized the kinship of their ideas toihose they found
in the Classics, and to these they gave unquestioned obedience.
Pico represents the literary movement named 'humanism',
so-called because of its preoccupations with humanity and
the individual capacities of men. Humanism is not as such
a philosophical tendency or system, but rather a cultural
and educational program emphasizing certain scholarly
disciplines, namely grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and
moral philosophy. The study of each of these subjects was
understood to include the reading and interpretation of
the standard Latin and Greek writers. By definition Humanism
excludes the study of logic, natural philosophy, astronomy,
medicine, law and theology. The significance of these

exclusions rests in the fact that these were the fields

 

2Ernst Cassirer et. al, (ed.), The Renaissance Philosophy
of Map (Chicago, 19655, pp. 223-35.

O\

emphasized by the scholastics of the later Middle Ages.3
Inasmuch as scholasticism can be associated with the Middle
Ages and more importantly with Christianity, it follows that
the Humanist who was gene-ally hostile to the suljects
taught by the 'schoolmen', would also be hostile to the
culture of the Riddle Ages. Thus Humanism can properly be
viewed as a departure from its medieval predecessors.

What made this departure possible had been the diminishing
power of the Church, weakened by the Babylonian captivity,
the Conciliar Movement, the Great Schism and the corruption
of the Papacy itself. Left without the authority of the
Church in secular matters it was necessary for statesmen
such as Hachiavelli to provide principles which would guide
men through the resultin: anarchy and disorder. Often the
principles offered by statesmen assumed a preéminence over
those of the Church as they did for many in Florence after
1340. As will again be the case in the nineteenth century,
justification for man's secular activitiesvwre found in
study of history and the virtue of statehood. Kachiavelli
hit upon the idea of historical analogy of the Italian
states with those of Livy's Rome. His use of the past as
a model for the present was a most important innovation not
only in political thought hut also in historinraphy. Until
the end of the eighteenth century analysis by analogy was

the dominant instrument of historical thought. Flavio.

 

3Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought (New York,
1961), pp. 8-17; Cassirer, pp. 2-0.

7

Eiondo,4 contemporary of Hachiavelli, used the same princi-
ple in the writing of Historiarum ab inclinations Romanormn
imperii decades. Later in the same fifteenth century
Sigonius wrote two histories of early Italy in which he
tended to idolize the achievementsof Rome and Italy. His
History of the Western Empire from Diocletion to the Death
of Justinian and History of Italy from_565 to 1286, were the
first attemptsat critical historical scholarship.5

Sigonius and Biondo believed, as Machiavelli had
declared, "whoever considers the past and the present will
readily observe that all cities and all peOples are and
ever have been animated by the same desires and the same

6 The Italy of their day in no way differed from

passions."
antiquity; thus the glory that once had belonged to the
Romans was also theirs. Their only regret was the mis-
appropriation of energies during the Riddle Ages. They
felt this would also inevitably be the fate of their own
descendents, for "such is the circle which all republics
are destined to run through."7
Throughout the Renaissance the decline of the Hedieval

Church continued apace. This decline prompted many to long

 

4Flavius Blondus in the Latin. See Harry Elmer Barnes,
.A History 9; Historical Writing (New York, 1963), pp. 103-08.

5

Barnes, p. 243.

0Quoted from the Discourses of Machiavelli by Michael
Curtis (ed.), The Great Eclitical Theories (2 vols., Kew
York, 1961), I, p. 214:

7Curtis, I, p. 214.

 

for the pure Christianity of the Apostolic Age. Appalled

by the corruption of Christianity everywhere visible within
the Church, Wiclif, Hus, Erasmus of.Rotterdam, and many
others called for reform. Although they had wide followings,
the very inertia of vested interests made such a correction,
if desirable, impossible. Out of this stalemate was spewn
the Protestant call to combat. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli
were evidence of the growing conviction that the doctrines
of the Catholic Church were wrong in principle, that no
amount of reform would correct the ills accompamdng the
Church; only a complete change in the very nature of the
Church would accomplish this end.

Once more Christ was placed at the center of historical
events. The Protestants insisted that God's 'providence'
ruled the world of man, and that man unless assisted by
God was depraved and lacking in religious motivations. To
justify the policy of the reforming churches they employed
the principles of historical analogy developed by the
Renaissance humanists. Every activity of the Christian
community was to be scrutinized for meaning so that God's
directions be better understood, and this life mastered,
but this concept returned them in effect to the philos0phy
of history advanced by Augustine much earlier. It did not,
however, restore an interest in the intervening centuries
of the Middle Ages.

In reaction to the Protestant Reformation, Catholics

set their own house in order, and in the latter half of

the sixteenth century assumed the offensive. They utilized
wherever possible their vast historical tradition to advance
their cause. In order for these traditions to Lecome a part
of the intellectual weaponry of the Catholics it was
necessary to return to the documents in which they were
recorded. Thus Baronius, the early Bollandists, Du Cange,
Habillon, Sirmond, Labbe, Petanius and Thomassin collected
and carefully annotated volumes of documentary material.
Frequently they used these collections to produce the first
"scientific" histories. The most significant of these were
prepared by Lenain de Tillemont. So thorough was his
Histoire des Empereurs that Gibbon would write a century
later, "It is much better to read this part of the Augustan
history in so learned and exact a compilation than in the
originals."8
A third reaction to "the inflexible rationality of
medieval thought"9was the Scientific Revolution of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As early as 1543
Copernicus propounded a cosmology predicated on "brute
fact". The implications of his world view were elaborated
by Brahe, Kepler and Galileo.during the first decades of
the seventeenth century. After Hewton wrote Philosophiae

Naturalis Principia Hathematica in 1687 there remained

 

8L. H. Angus-Eutterworth, Ten Easter Historians
(Aberdeen, 1962), p. 66.

 

9Alfred North Whitehead, Sgience and the hodern ngld
(Yew York, 1960), pp. 15-16.

 

 

 

19

little doubt that the universe was governed by ‘laws‘,
thought to be discernabie if man used his rational faculties
in a scientific manner. Turning away from the realism of
the Renaissance and the theisn of the Reformatior,intel-
lectuals, responding to Newton, drew a picture of man who
through the power of his reason, was progressively advancing
in harmony with the 'laws' of nature in an effort to free
himself from the ignorance and superstition of medieval
Christianity.

Beginning with Descartes, who exalted, reason and
insisted on the invariability of mathematical laws, and
extending to Voltaire and Montesquieu, who together enunci-
ated the applications of reason to the writing of history,
the ’Age of Reason' eventually freed history from the
domain of theological disputation.

Becauseiflm 'philosophes" of the enlightenment
believed that modern man stood at the highest point in
history, they favored recent history over the history of
the more distant past. Moreover, recent history could be
more readily verified. The materials for composing it
lay near at hand, but as one went further into the past,
the more he encountered the myth and legend that often
made truth incomprehensible. In his definition of history
Voltaire said: "History is the recital of facts given as

true, in contradiction to the fable, which is the recital

ll

of facts given to be false."10 For Voltaire, only the
"incontestable records" were worth the historian's at-
tention. Eefore the fifteenth century there are few such

records available to the historian, and those that do
exist are often chronological in nature and have held

little interpretive value.11 What especially attracted

Voltaire was the study of the human mind in seventeenth
century France, as he demonstrated in the case of his

Siecle de Louis XIV (1751) or of the world in his Essai

 

sur les moeurs. In the latter book he exalted " the
Chinese for their four thousand years of uninterrupted
cultural maturity. In the former he remarked: "Whoever
thinks, or (what is more-rare) whoever possesses taste,
only counts four centuries in the history of the world."12
These four ages in which "the arts were perfected" were
the age of Pericles, the Augustan age of Rome, the Italy
of the Medici and the century of Louis XIV.

Voltaire echoed the humanists in his confidence that
history has a highly instructive value. By comparison with
the past or with other centuries modern men can emulate

their laws, customs, and arts. They can also be reminded

 

10J. B. Black, The Art.g§ History, quoted from Voltaire's
entry in the Encyclopedia edited by Liderdt (New York, 1926)
p. 62.

llBlack, pp. 61-65.

12George Peabody Gooch, History and Historians 3£;32£
Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1959), p. 11.

of their errors. People, Voltaire taught, could not be

reminded too often of the disasters and crimes which make
up the greater part of history. The horrors of such scandals
could be forestalled in the future if only the reader of I
history took to heart the lessons they indicated.

History could be instructive for reasons eXplained by
Montesquieu in 1734. In his Considerations sur les causes

des la grandeur des_Romains et de leur decadence he set

 

forth the following principle: "There are general causes,
moral or physical, which operate in every monarchy, raise,
maintain it, or overthrow it."13 In the preface to another
work, Pe l'esprit des lois, he showed that it is absurd to
suppose "blind fate has produced all the effects which we

14 Since all that occurs is subject to

see in the world."
the same causes, there exists an inner logic to history
which man in his infinite wisdom is able to unravel.

The selective application of Reason to historical and
scientific subjects evidenced elsewhere was also used to
examine the religious foundations of the eighteenth century.
The philosopheS' set up as criteria for determining truth
only those facts and theories which could he arrived at by
employing the scientific methods of reason. It was perfectly

clear to men like Voltaire that theological propositions

were not arrived at in accordance with rational criteria.

13Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? (New York,
1953), p. 114.

14Carr, p. 115.

13

It soon became the 'cause célebre' to condemn as irrational
most of theolosy. Christianity came to be regarded as a
pernicious plot hatched by the priestly class. The annals
of Christianity were to these critiques a chronicle of
|'lies and crimes". Voltaire, the leader of this movement,
pleaded that birotry, intolerance, superstition and the
organized clergy he replaced by "natural religion" and

"natural morality." "Ecrasez l'infame". In his Essa} sur

 

created by human opinion, but no longer of any use in a
rational society. Hume supported Voltaire from his home

in Scbtland. . In his Treatise

’-

Euran 1‘79 ture, he

'3'

provided the rationale for a "natural religion” tased upon
the "Science of Man".

Poth Voltaire and the 'philosophes' more generally
were also hostile towards the Middle Ages, the centuries in
which the "ignorance and superstition" of Christianity were
predominant. Voltaire believed the Riddle Ages to be a
Vast cultural trough. Hume in his history of England dis-
missed the Anglo-Saxon centuries as a "battle of kites a.d

crows". Voltaire also declared the Riddle Ages to have

01

been an abyss deserving "a' little study as the doinfs of

15
wolves and bears."

Consequentlv when Edward Gitton (1737-1794) conceived

the plan of the treat work to which he dedicated his life,

1 K. . '
“Zoocn, p. 11 '

14

he fell heir to the traditions of this environment. In some
respects he was the last of the humanists. To them he owed
his love for the Roman Republic, his distaste for the later

Empire, the barbarian and Christianity, and his comparative

method of historical analysis. In other ways he was the
product of the thought and culture of the enlightenment.
From Montesquieu, he gained his conviction that there were
causes for Rome's decline. And from Voltaire came the
faith that knowledge of these causes would have value in
his own time. He aspired as Voltaire had taught to recite
only proven facts, and maintained throughout his eight
volumes an admirable sense of appropriate evidence. But

he also had inherited the snobbish attitude of the 'philosophe'

towards historical epochs lacking in artistic achievement.

“A

Of the ten centuries he narrates, only one, the golden

Age" of the Antonines,, the "most happy and prosperous" in

the annals of mankind, is fitting for praise.16

 

l6Christopher Dawson reflected upon Gibbon's debt to
his age as follows:

"No man could belong more utterly to his own
age, He is the perfect representative of the
eighteenth—century spirit in all its strength
and weakness: its self-confidence and self-
satisfaction, its classicism and formalism, its
mature and cosmopolitan civilization.

The Dynamics of World History, edited by John J. Mulloy

 

 

(New York, 1962), p. 321; Edward Gibbon, The Decline and

Fall of the Roman Em ire ed. John B. Bury (London ln897)
, p.78: .2 __o 9 9

15

Calling upon magnificent stylistic resources Gibbon
narrates with infinite detail "the greatest, perhaps, and
the most awful scene in the history of mankind",17 the
decline of the civilization that once was Rome. His skill
in combining precise and accurate scholarship was the
marvel of his age, and he applied this skill to an attack
on the very repository of Christian eminence, the history
of the Church just prior to and after the Peace of the

18

Church in 313. With tolerant, saddened and resigned

aloofness he writes the history of peoples he disliked,

19 He describes with monotonous regularity

dfl2o

even despised.

the "crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankin under

the Christian leadership of the Byzantine East and Christian
West. Gibbon treats Byzantium with a contemptuous indiffer-
ence possible only for a man who shared his own identification
with classical Rome. Towards the Christian West he shows a

slightly greater sympathy born of his cosmopolitan maturity,

21

but compromised by his ignorance of Christianity. His

ww—

17Gibbon, I, p. 56.

18Dawson has a particularly good account of Gibbon's
attitude towards Christianity and furthermore an explanation
as to why Gibbon chooses "to reduce its place in history by
treating it with irony and seeking to discredit it with
sneers and innuendoes.", pp. 327, 326 and 333-35.

19Dawson expresses this opinion, pp. 330-34. In this
he does not stand alone. Black arrives at a similar esti-
mation, pp. 69-71; and Angus-Butterworth intimates this to
be a weakness of Gibbon's mental framework, pp. 67-68.

2OAngus-Butterworth, p. 70 quoting from Gibbon.

21Above, note 18, p. 15.

16

strong sense for the historic caused him to realize the
civilizing influence of Christianity on the barbarians (a
group for whom he had nothing good to say). He could,
however, follow praise of the Church with a devastating
characterization of monasticism.

The real value of the Church was not related to the
religion it espoused, but to its preservation of elements
of classical culture. He praises, for example, its use
of Latin and of Roman law and its universal nature. As
a result of its authority the Church "preserved in the
downfall of the empire a permanent respect for the name

22

and institutions of Rome." Through constant correspondence

and frequent pilgrimages, the Popes were able to acquire the
means by which they "cemented the union of the Christian
republic, and gradually produced the similar manners and
common jurisprudence which have distinguished from the rest
of mankind the independent, and even hostile, nations of
modern Europe."23,
As to the nature of decline of the Empire, Gibbon
believed it to be related to the very heights Rome had
achieved. Like Voltaire, he observed that those rare
moments in which man reaped the rewards of his genius and
virtue were inevitably followed by centuries of decline
where genius is no longer evident and virtue negligible.

22Gibbon, IV, p. 80.
2

\fl

Gibbon, IV, p. 80.

17

Thus Carl Becker says that the Decline and Fall is "something
more than a history." It is "a memorial oration: Gibbon is
commemorating the death of ancient civilization; he has
described, for the 'instruction of future ages,’ the 'triumph
of barbarism and religion.”24

The spirit of Gibbon's great work was the very antithesis
of Augustine's defense of Christianity. For Gibbon the Roman
Empire was a symbol of civilization succumbing to the joint
assault of barbarism and Christianity. The eighteenth
century had discovered history to be autonomous and self-
sufficient, independent of the need for God to direct its
course. As scholars of the "enlightenment" applied their
discovery, they were the first historians to be concerned
exclusively with the imminent as opposed to the "transcendent".
They had an historical consciousness quite distinct from
whatever religious views they might owe respect. To find
the fruit of historical laws they employed rational, and not
theological concepts.

In the nineteenth century the enlightened rationalism
of Voltaire and the humanistic rationalism of Gibbon were
reflected by the philosophies of history advanced by the

GermansJohann Herder and Georg Hegel and their disciples.

Herder believed history to be "a purely natural history of

 

24Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City 2; the Eighteenth-
Century Philosgphers (New Haven, 1963), p. 118.

18

human forces, actions, and instincts, according to time and
place."25 And Hegel, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of
History, asserts that the story of mankind shows continuity
and unity from beginning to end, for history like nature,
is subject to rational laws.

However, Herder and Hegel and the rationalism they
reflect do not dominate the thought of the nineteenth
century. As the Ancien Regime fell before the combined
forces of industrialization and the French Revolution,
there emerged after 1815 a proliferation of doctrines and
movements of many sorts. One of these movements was'
"romanticism" which was primarily a theory of literature
and the arts. As a theory of art it raised basic questions
on the nature of significant truth, on the importance of
various human faculties, on the relation of thought and
feeling, and on the meaning of the past and of time itself.
Representing a new way of sensing all human experience, it
principally affected the reliance of the 'philosophes' on
reason and the scientific method.

Possibly the most fundamental romantic attitude was a
love of the unsystematic--or mooos or impressions, scenes
or stories, sights or sounds, personal idiosyncracies or

peculiar customs, which the intellect could never reduce

25Hans Meyerhoff (ed.), The Philosophy 2; History in
Our Time (Garden City, New York, 1959), p. 4.

26
R. G. Collingwood The Idea 2; History (New York
1956), pp. 113-15. ’ ,

 

19

to an abstract generalization. Romanticists insisted on

the value of feeling as well as reason, the importance of
the subconscious alongside observable experience. They
loved the mysterious, the unknown, and hence contributed a
new interest in strange and distant societies and in strange
and distant historical epochs. Vhere the 'philosophes' had
deplored the Middle Ages as a time of intellectual absurdity,
the romanticists looked back upon them with esteem and even
nostalgia. They found in them a fascination, a colorfulness,
or a spiritual depth which they missed in their own time.27
In medieval art and institutions the romantics saw the
expression of an inner genius. The medieval writer was
original in his literature, inventing the fairy tale and
developing the vernacular romance and lyric. Literature
which fascinated Herder, Tieck, Arnim, Brentano and Jacob
Grimm inspired a whdle generation of German and French
lyricists. Medieval law was also thought creative, making
possible, as it was developed by the medieval genius, the
growth of the nation-state. The German Karl Eichhorn and
F. G. von Savigny detailed this concept in their histories
of law. Within their histories they developed a second
conception present in romanticism, the idea of prOgress.
History was the development of humanity, or the education
of mankind; thus past stages of historical growth, such as

the Middle Ages, would necessarily lead to the present.

 

27Collingwood, pp. 86-87; Walter Kaufmann, From
Shakespeare 22 Existentialism (Garden City, New York, 1960),
Pp. 77-78; Barnes, pp. 173:80.

 

20

Further the Middle Ages had intrinsic value not only as an
unique achievement of the human mind, but also because it
held a significant place in the course of evolution leading
to the even greater present. This in principle differs
from the humanists who despised the past as such, but
would regard certain features of the past as transcending
the debilitations of time by having an excellence of their
own, that would serve them as permanent models of classic
perfection. For romanticists all the past was worthy of
study as opposed to a few select centuries, such as the
four enumerated by Voltaire.28

Alongside the illusionistic possibilities of Romanticism
there were also very realistic tendencies. No less essential
than the possibility of losing oneself amidst fantasies, or
a total surrender to all passions, was the effort to break
away from the constructions of rationalism which had led to
misleading generalizations and abstractions. In either case
the romanticists were seeking to free the mind of obstructions
and thereby opening it to the manifold manifestations of
reality that could be directly experienced. This appeal to
direct experience led directly to the conversion of history
to an empirical discipline under German leadership. As such
empiricism reinforced the romantic revolt against philos0phy,
or more specifically those philosophers like Voltaire and

'Kant who were speculative in their approach to history.

 

28Barnes, pp. 177-80.

21

It was Leopold von Ranke (1795-1896) who successfully,

advocated the use of empirical methods and critical standards.
He felt logical and analytic studies of human nature would
lead to a systematic and non-speculative philosophy of
history. Soon archival research, philology, numismatics

and archaeology were developed as tools and analytic tech-
niques to supplement traditional fields of historical
investigation. Critical methods were devised or improved

for sifting, testing, collating and evaluating documentary

sources, and rigorous standards were employed for judging

the impartiality, objectivity and truthfulness of historical
work.29 As these techniques were taught in the Prussian
historical schools by Ranke and his students, academicians
from all over the world flocked to their seminars. The
recipients of this training emerged as the scientific
historians of the later half of the nineteenth and first
decades of the twentieth century. N. D. Fustel de Coulanges
and Ferdinand Lot of France, and J. B. Bury, Sir Samuel Dill
and William Paton Ker of England and Henry Osborn Taylor of
the United States strove to use the new methodology of
historical scholarship to make history the equal of any of

the sciences.

It was a short step from the concepts of romanticism
to those of nationalism. Just as the Romanticists had

reacted to the rationalism of the enlightenment and of the

 

29Gooch, pp. 95-97; Barnes, pp. 239-242; Smith, pp. 45-
52.

22

Napoleonic system, so they as nationals reacted against the
internationalism of the eighteenth century. In both cases
the movements were led by intellectuals, the nationalists

seizing upon Herder's concept of the ”Volkgeist” or national

spirit. They began with the principle of progress, applied
it to the culture of a peeple and then argued that every
society had a language, history, world-view, and culture
unique to itself. 'This often became associated with politi-
cal nationalism which maintained all persons of the same

nationality or language should be encompassed within the
30

same state.
To the Germans, divided and frustrated as they were,
the idea of national unity became almost an obsession.
Jacob Grins went about Germany with his brother collecting
£01k tales which he thought indicated the ancient, native
spirit of Germany. Herder discovered anthropology and
concluded that the special peculiarities of various physical
types of men were racial in nature, and that among e race
the pyschclcgicel characteristics were fixed and uniform.
Hegel new evidence in the Napoleonic conquests of the need
of a people to possess a potent and independent state if
they wished to enjoy freedom and dignity. His evolutionary
conception of reality suggested that existing affairs were
temporary and therefore the disunity of the German nation

need not remain unchanged.31

 

W

3oBernes, pp. 207-10.

3chcch, pp. 49-57; Collingwood, pp. 88-93.

 

1m.

23

Banks, who had founded the ”scientific school” of
historical writing, never lost sight of the Germany in
which he lived. He believed the greatest asset of EurOpe
to be the individuality of the nations within it, nations
which refused to be subjugated by any single power in the
manner attempted by France of Louis XIV cr.Napoleon. He
wrote:

History was not such chaos as it appeared at

first sight. There were creative forces, moral

energies at work which gave it value and meaning.

States were intellectual entities, creations of

the human spirit, thoughts of God. No people

could live for itself, and the character 3§ each
only developed in contact with the whole.

In addition to creating an interest in the study of the
Middle.Lges as a whole, the national spirit so evident in
the nineteenth century encouraged scholars to take their
first serious look at the "Dark Ages” which followed the
”fall“ of the Roman Empire. Among the Germans there were
several I'Oarolingian" scholars. They were inspired by a
conviction that Charlemagne was the ”founder” of the
Empire from which modern Germany descended. 'Other his-
torians returned to the centuries of the invasions to find

the origins of Germanic tradition. Karl vcn Savigny, for
example, went back tothe fifth century to begin to trace

the survival of Roman law in every part of what had been

the llpire. He concluded his fiigtogz of goman Law in the
nigglgdgggg by arguing that the Germans never destroyed or

 

32Gooch, p. 80.

(a

.
f
‘ e
g ,
I
- .t
l I!
i l .'
t . fl _
.
.
I
v
. s , ‘

24

even attempted to Germanize the Romans. Furthermore the

Romans.were better able to express themselves once the

Germans had freed them of the stifling, decaying Empire.33

Earlier Eichhorn had written a W
.IHEIIEEILQEE that provided an estimate of the varied
sources of law that went into the making of the German
nation. Roman, barbarian and Church laws were considered
as elements of equally important stature.34
i contrary opinion was reached by the French historians,

who were, unlike the German scholars, interested in the
pro-Carolingian period, because Gaulic history extended
back prior to the conquests of Caesar. In his|§1§32;1_21
figgthggn Gag; under the I;anks, Claude Fauriel argued that
the Germanic invaders brought nothing to the Gallo-Roman
civilization but ruin and chaos. What was of value in
post-invasion Gaul was what was retained from Latin antiquity.
In emphathetic denial of the German studies of this issue,
he maintained that the invasion in no way rejuvenated a
supposedly corrupted Roman province. Sismondi came to
similar conclusions in his Higtogz o; the Italian ggpublicg,
the story of Italy from the fall of the Western rmp1ro.35

‘ Augustin Thierry who like Pauriel took up the study of

the Merovingain epoch, pronounced in gécits dgs tggpg

A.‘

33600611, PP. 47-49e
3‘G’ooch’ pp. 40-410
35Gocch, pp. 158-62.

 

25

‘nfizgxingigna that it was a mistake to dismiss this era as
the most confused and arid period of French history. In
anticipation of William Paton Ker he judged the narratives
of Gregory of tours superior to any history written before
lroissart. Thierry was also an advocate of the race theory
present in many German and English histories. He portrayed
the Gallo-Romansas a race struggling against the barbarian
Pranks. In this they were in part successful and as a
result I'the core of the nation, by blood and laws, by
language and ideas, was Gallo-Roman.”36 Acknowledging that
the Prankish influence almost obliterated the earlier Roman
social order in the North, he explained the eventual dominance
of the Gallo-Roman tradition was transferred to the North
through the growth of cities which were governed by the
Roman models of law.

there had existed among French historians of the Middle
Ages a strong current of Catholicism since the sixteenth
century, and in the nineteenth century this current was
manifested in massive studies of the medieval church.
Catholicism had suffered considerable setbacks in prestige
under the attacks of the 'philcscphes' of the eighteenth
century.and it seems reasonable to think of much of the
Catholic scholarship in the nineteenth as a belated response
to these earlier reversals. l.master cf apologetics,

Viccmte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), following his own

 

36Gooch, p. 165.

26

religious conversion, wrote the Génig du Qhristianisme
(1802) and ng figrtzrs (1809). In these he gave word
pictures of the beauties of Christianity emphasizing its
dogmas, legends, mysteries, ritural and art. He believed
the beauties of Christianity were eternal truths. These
truths, he argued were best captured by the Church, and
at no time did the Church have greater glory than in the
France of the Middle Ages. His writings inspired a whole

generation of French historians.37

Among the most notable of those influenced by
Chateaubriand was Jules Michelet (1798-1874), who undertook
a large scale history of France. In the early volumes of
this work he supplied an imaginative narrative of French
history during the Middle Ages which reflected his national

sentiments and also exalted the role of the Church in a

manner which echoes genig du Christianig 9. He presages
Henry Osborn Taylor in arguing that the French nation

sunited the Roman, Celt and Teuton races, each with its

distinctive character, into a people in love with liberty.
that within the nation there are provinces with peculiar

features suggested to Hichelet that these races were
unevenly blended in France just as they were in Europe at

large. The soul of France matured as a result of complex

events which ”modified, smelted, transmuted these elements

 

27

”38

made them into a body. There is no one French race, and

no number of conquests created France. Rather a mysterious
combination of events gave France to the world.

Count de Montalembert, also inspired by Chateaubriand
and friendly towards Michelet, represents the heights of
Catholic scholarship in his The Monks of the west_§;gm
fit, fiengdigt to St, Bernard (1846). His book which begins
with a dedication to Pope Pius IX was, in his words "in-
tended to vindicate the glory of one of the greatest
institutions of Christianity. . . ."39 To him there was
no doubt that the monastic orders played a great part in
the history of European civilization, and as Jean DEcarreaux
will claim more than a hundred years later, the monks of the
west ”must be regarded as the first to lead the nations from

the darkness of paganism and savagery to the light of the

Christian faith and the blessings of a civilized life."4o

Hontalembert shows no sympathy with Gibbon's Romans,
the ”masters and tyrants of the world.'41 Antiquity had
been bankrupt, and ”in order that the Church should save
society, a new element was necessary in the world."42 This
new element was the barbarian. The barbarian restored to

civilization the freedom and honor the Empire had taken

 

38Gooch, quoted from Genie du Christianisme, p. 172.

39Count de Montalembert, The Monks of the West from
St enedict to St Bernard, (ed.) F. A. Gasquet (London,

9 eP-v-
40

Montalembert, I, p. viii.
#1Montalembert, I, p. 46.
42Montalembert, I, p. 205.

I‘-

28.

away.43 "The Roman Empire, without the Barbarians, was an

abyss of servitude and corruption. The Barbarians and the
Monks united recreated a world which was to be called
Christendom.”44
Unlike their predecessors, historians of the nineteenth
century were quite willing to study the Middle Ages. During
the_four previous centuries, intellectuals had been in
revolt against the ”inflexible rationality of medieval
thought"45 and the religion they associated with it. By
the eighteenth century Voltaire could summarize the attitude
of his "generation” by observing the Middle Ages deserved
"as little study as the doings of wolves and bears'.'.46 In
the nineteenth century, intellectuals were in revolt against
the 'inflexible rationality of enlightened thought'.
Appealing to what is called romanticism, the reactionaries
found in the man of the Middle Ages kindred spirits.
Reaction to the eighteenth century rationalists also
took the form of nationalism. Searching for the origins
of their nation, historians discovered the early Middle
Ages of the Herovingians in France and of the Carolingians
for Germany. Delight in the past for its own sake, and

as the source of one's nation was combined with an emphasis

 

43Hontalembert, I, p. 207.
MHontalembert, I, p. 210.
45Above, p. 13.

46Gooch, p. 11.

29

upon empirical, as opposed to rational or speculative,

evidence to produce "scientific" histories on medieval
subjects. '

Yet a third reaction_to the ”Age of Reason” could be
found in the reassertion of Catholicism, and in history,
study of Catholic institutions. In some cases, such as
those of Eichhcrn or Michelet, an emphasis upon the role
of the Church was combined with legal or political history.
In other studies, Church or monastic history alone was the
object of the historian. Chateaubriand wrote of the "genius"
of Christianity and Montalembert of the medieval monk. I

It is clear that out of several centuries of hostility
towards the Middle Ages and its study, a counteracting move-
ment among scholars restored the image of the Middle Ages,
and gave impetus to medieval studies. Within the first
four decades after the Congress of Vienna historical studies
had undergone a change of major proportions, and the way was

prepared for a modern appreciation of the early Middle Ages.

CHAPTER II
CONCEPTIONS OF THE POSITIVE HISTORIANS

During the last half of the nineteenth century a
movement called positivism, for want of a better name, domi-
nates the historiography of the Middle Ages. Positivism
arose out of the rejection of romanticism after 1848, and
represents a stronger emphasis upon the spirit of empiricism
and nationalism that had developed alongside and within the
romantic movement. The historians motivated by positivism
decisively reject the pose Gibbon assumed towards the early
Middle Ages. And it seems quite clear, that whatever the
form of reaction historians might take towards their
predecessors, there will be no reversion to the attitudes
associated with the rationalists.

Intellectuals of the Romantic and more so of the
Nationalistio persuasion hoped to find in the Revolution
of 1848 the fulfillment of their ideals. They had envisioned
a.humanitarian nationalism, the achievement of a liberal
order without vtmsnce. These visions were crushed by the
failure of the Revolution not only in Germany, but also in
Hungary, in Italy, and in France. Everywhere the cry for
the freedom of nations from foreign rule or for self rule
by national groups had been stiflEd, at least for the moment.
With the passing of the Revolution, idealism faded. It was

replaced by realism of a new sort. This realism discarded

ft

(3

31

Romanticism, but not the objectives of Romanticism. Re-
taining the same objectives, an emphasis was placed on
finding new means by which they might be attained.

This emphasis upon how to attain legitimate ends
turned the minds of Europeans to the methodology of science.
In no sphere had the nineteenth century been more successful
than in that of science and technology, and for this reason
the European community in the second half of the century
was particularly susceptible to ideas purported to be scien—
tific in nature. The growing prestige of science led many
people to believe that it could explain the mysteries of
nature and solve all human problems; This belief took two
forms: Darwinism and positivism. According to positivism,
only natural phenomena and their properties can be known
scientifically, and other types of explanation, be they
theological or metaphysical, are by definition "unscientific".
By using science, both nature and man would ultimately be ~
understood and hence subject to scientific manipulation.
According to Darwinism, all life_was the product of evolution.
Differences among the species and variations within any species
were explicable as adaptations to the creaturesenvironment
through a process of natural selection and the struggle for

survival.1

 

1Collingwood, pp. 127-33; H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness
and §ocigty (New York, 1958), pp. 33-40.

flu

t.

32

Responses to Darwinism and positivism were manifold.
Champions of Nationalism and imperialism used Darwinism to
justify the survival of the fittest in war and the rule of
weak by thestrong. Racist argued the white man superior
to the black, or, as Kingsley expressed it, the Teuton to
the degenerate Roman. Socialists argued that by greater
organization society was assured of even greater advancement,
and Spencer pointed to education as the key to social organi-
zation.

Positivists no less than the Darwinists stressed the
progress of men through science. They believed, as had their
founder, the French philoBOpher Auguste Comte, in the inevi-
table progress of human knowledge. Comte promised a happier
future would be provided by inventive technicians and by
sociologists and that by using the methods of science it
would be possible to adjust societies imperfections. His
faith in science as the means to progress dominated European
thought after 1870. In this sense positivism was also a
popular ideology. All that was needed to produce a ”Great
Society" was to discover the general laws governing parti-
cular phenomena, and then these laws could become instruments
to aid human progress.2

Predicated upon the assumptions of positivism the new
fields of social science, anthropology, psychology, and

political science were originated. Of an importance equally

 

2coilingwood, pp. 128 and 222; Hughes, pp. 36-8;
Smith, pp. 93 and 136.

33

great to the creation of these new fields, was the manner in
which positivism and Darwinism affected conventional studies
such as economics and especially history. It was commonly
argued, after Darwinism, that historical epochs were akin to
organisms, descending from some pre-existing species.
Following the pattern of Hegel's dialectic, development of
unorganism presumed a synthesis at a new level of the elements
of conflicting forces at a previous level. Evolution had
succeeded revolution as the basic pattern of historical
process.

As understood by the historian of the nineteenth century,
however, the product of this evolution was determined by the
parental elements. Thus positivists thought they had found
the key to the law which governs history. Since the parental
elements of any historical enterprise indicated, or rather
determined, the nature of that enterprise, historians needed
only to analyze the nature of the parent to discover what
the child would be.

The principles of determinism, of evolution and of
nationalism are evident in most historical works written in
the fifty years following the Revolutions of 1848. Of those
historians directly concerned with the early Middle Ages,
positivism was represented by a generation beginning with
Charles Kingsley in 1864 and ending with Henry Osborn Taylor
in 1911. To demonstrate how each member of this important
generation, did in fact reflect the principles mentioned
above, they will in the following pages be given opportunity

to ”speak for themselves”.

£‘

34

In his The Roman and the Teuton (186&) it was the
ambition of Charles Kingsley to resolve the contributions

of the good Teuton, the civilized Roman and the civilizing
monk to the medieval world. He pcetically portrayed the
barbarian as a child of the forest, ”of a royal race, and
destined to win glory for all time to come.”3 But, he

noted, had the Teuton destroyed Home earlier the loss would

have been immense:

9

Christianity would have been stifled in its
very cradle; and with Christianity all chance-- -
be sure of it--of their own progress. Roman law,
order, and discipline, the very things which they
needed to acquire by a contact of five hundred
years, would have been swept away. All classic
literature and classic art, which they learnt to
admire with an almost superstitious awe, would

have perished likewise. Greek philosophy, the
germs of physical science, and all that we owe

to the ancients, would have perished; and we

should have truly had an invasion of the bar-
barians, followed by truly dark ages, in which
Europe would have had to begin all anew, without 4
the help of the generations which had gone before.

Kingsley reaches a conclusion diametrically opposed to that

proposed by Gibbon. He makes no admission of a “Dark Ages.”
Events after the ”Fall” were orderly, progressive and
evolutionary, and quite obviously not catastrophic.
Conspicuous among the French historians of the latter
half of the nineteenth century was a disciple of von Ranks,
Fume D. Fustel de Coulanges. In a major departure from

existing interpretations, Fustel de Coulanges declared the

 

3Charles Kingsley, The Roman and the Teuton (London,
1864) 0 Po 6e

4Kingsley, p. 13.

IIH

v-'

IA!
.1:

E?!

3”

0+
alps-Dr.

35-

German invasions of the fifth century to have had no influ-

ence on the history, religion, customs or government of

Roman Gaul. They did bring with them the confusion which
eventually accelerated the development of feudalism already
existing 'in germ'.5 At the moment of the Frankish invasion,
the central authority in Gaul had already passed from the
Romans to the great landowners who had little governing or
fighting ability. Since the aristocracy held economic

control of the land the invasion proved to be a pacific
_settlement of Germans whose institutions had already been
Romanized, and was in no way a conquest. Except for the
change in governance from the Emperor to Frankish king,

the Gauls were unaffected. In most externals the Mercvingians
were merely an extension of the Western Empire. Although the
Germans did not introduce political or economic change, their
presence was followed by momentous transformations. Feudalism
altered individual and property relationships, and a new
aristocracy arose out of these alterations in social combi-
nations. The process of change had been evolutionary not
revolutionary, and for that reason France retained its Gallo-

Roman character in face of the Frankish “onslaught”.6

 

5Fustel de Coulanges made use of the "germ theory"
then fairly current among German historians. The theory is

a natural outgrowth of the dialectical process explained
above (p. 33) . If the parental element of an institution
determines the nature of that institution, then the insti-

tution itself exists ”in germ" in the parent.

63mith, p. 48; Gooch, pp. 200-04; Barnes, pp. 250-53
and 275-77.

36

With Fustel de Coulanges' theories so contrary to the
weighty tradition of EurOpean historiography it seemed for
a time possible that his gallant break with Gibbon would
soon be forgotten. Since it was possible and perhaps all
too accurate to accuse Fustel de Coulanges with an un-
scholarly hostility to traditional icons, what was necessary
to secure his departure was the support lent by someone of
solid reputation. This was forthcoming from J. B. Bury
(1861-1927). a distinguished English historian. Bury had

built his reputation upon works ranging from a History 9:
Grace; and the editorship of the first six volumes of the
gglpzigggigggigntggigtgrz to original application of the
use of Russian and other Slavic languages in his studies
as a professor of Modern History and successor to Lord
Acton. He was well known as the definitive modern editor
of Gibbcn's nggline and F511 and he established himself as
an interpreter of the Gibbon thesis in his own i tor o
the Later Roman Empire (1889) and The Invasions 9f Euggpg

p; thg Barggrians (1928).7

 

7Dawson cites Bury from his introduction to his edition
of Gibbon, pages xxxix and 111-1111:

Neither the historian nor the man of letters will
any longer subscribe, without a thousand reserves,
to the theological chapters of the Decline and
Fall, and no discreet enquirer would go there for
his ecclesiastical history.
And with respect to the later Empire:
Gibbon s account of the internal history of the
Empire after Heraclius is not only superficial;
it gives an entirely false impression of the
facts. The designation of the later Empire as a
uniform tale of weakness and misery' is one of
the most untrue, and most effective, judgments
ever uttered by a thoughtful historian.

37

Where Fustel de Coulanges had challenged the cata—
clysmic interpretations of Gibbon as not applying to Gaul,
and furthermore had denied that the invasions in any way
explained the changes that occurred there, Bury leveled a
direct attack on the concept of the Empire's fall. Bury
contended it misleading and fallacious to use 476 as the
year in which the Empire “fell". He argued that in fact no
one event can be cited for that purpose. What had confused
Gibbon and others was their assumption that the same
factors 'caused' both the changes observable in the Empire
during the fourth century and the reductions of the ability
of the Empire to resist the invasions of the fifth.8

There is no reason, states Bury, to believe the number
of the invaders, the weakness of the army or the alleged
disintegrative effect of Christianization explain the
inability of Rome to resist the barbarians. If any such
factors were present in the fourth century, they cannot be
taken as causes for what happened in the fifth. As Bury
puts it, ”the gradual collapse of Roman power in this
section of the Empire was the consequence of a series of
contingent events."9 By this he meant that each event was

independent of some general cause or causes that might be

used to explain all aspects of the decline or the alleged

 

8J. B. Bury, The nvasions of Euro e b the Barbarian ,
ed. F. J. 0. Hearnsan (New York, I928), pp. I57-72; 3. B.
Bury, ”The Later Roman Empire," The all of Rome: an it
§§Fjgmlgingg, ed. Mortimer Chambers (New York, 195$). PD. 13-

9Bury, ”Later Empire," p. 15.

I...

38

”fall”. The examples Bury gives for his "series of contingent
events". resemble both a description of the events and a
summary of causes, and this is Bury's purpose. Rome, in

his judgment, lost her provinces not as the result of

some "inevitable effect of any of those featunmswhich have
been rightly or wrongly described as causes or consequences

of her general 'decline'",10 but because there had been a

long series of such ”causes" none of which were "fatal”
alone, but together overwhelmed the frustrated leaders of
the Empire.

Once confidence in Gibbon's theory of causation had
been undermined if not destroyed, Bury, on constitutional
grounds, ”proves” the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in
476 to be meaningless. Actual power in Italy rested with
Odovacar until 489. A certain Nepos who lived to 480 was
the recognized Emperor of the West by all except the'
Viscgoths in Italy. Constitutionally there was only one
Empire at that time, Bury argues, and it was ruled by Zeno

in Constantinople, as had been the case whenever a Western

' Emperor was not recognized in the East.

The events of A. D. 476 have been habitually
designated as the ”Fall of the Western Empire."
The phrase is inaccurate and unfortunate, and

sets the changes which befell in a false light.

No Empire fell in A. D. 476; there was no ”Western
Empire to fall._ There was only one Roman Empire,

which sometimes was governed by two or more Augusti.11

 

1°Bury, ”Later Empire,” p. 16.

llBury, ”Later Empire,” pp. 18-19.

Q‘}
-

39

As Bury goes on to explain, the Empire ruled by Zeno in 476
did not ”fall” in that century, or for that matter until
1453. Bury is identifying Empire with what Gibbon recognized
as the Eastern or Byzantine Empire.

Bury also uses his arguments to acknowledge that the
important apower shift in the West was the military one
accomplished sometime earlier than 476. Thus the only event
of consequence in 476 was the assumption of kingship by

Odovaoar, a role which established him as the leader of

the Visogoths, the holders of military power in Italy.12

As the nineteenth century was coming to a close it
became obvious to many that Gibbon had after all left the
history of the Empire and its successor states undone.
Besides Bury this fresh awareness led Heinrich Brunner,
Albert R. Post and M. I. Rostovtzeff to make new inquiries
into the causes of the Empire's decline.13 Others followed
the direction of Fustel de Coulanges into a more intensive
and ”scientific” investigation of the limited areas which

had been under Roman rule. Examples of this trend are

T. H. Hodgkin, Itel; egg the lavagers, Robin George
Collingwood, Roman Britain, and Samuel Dill, Roman Society

in_Ganl_is_:ha_nereziesieasise-

12Bury, "Later Empire,” pp. 17-20; Bury, The Invasions,
PP. 167-73e - - .

13Heinrich Brunner, The curces of the Law of En land
trans. W. Hastie: (Edinburgh, I888); IIbert Hermann Post,
2e; unsprung des rechts (Oldenbur 1876)° Mikhail I.
Rostovtzeff, Rome trans. J. D. Ruffg(New York, 1960).

 

4O

Merovingian studies had been distinguished by a number
of French historians in the nineteenth century, among them
Guizot, Thierry and Fustel de Coulanges. Dill haped to
provide an up-to-date synthesis of these studies in English.
He particularly wanted to give support to the anti-invasion
views of Fustel de Coulanges and his own mentor, Bury. Thus
he writes:

It is true that the great event which we call the

Fall of the Western Empire, though it is super-

ficially marked by the disappearance of the last

holder of the Imperial title, was not a sudden,
cataclysmic change, affecting a radical revolution

in the material gondition and moral tone of the
old population.1

Dill strove to explain that while on the political level a
major upheaval occurred when the Frankish military made
inroads on the imperial control of Gaul, the Church and-
ordinary people lived without noticing the disturbance.
”Even the keenest and most civilized minds in the fifth
century were little conscious of the momentous revolution
which was going on around them. . . .”15
As Fustel de Coulanges had made clear the invasions
did not affect the Gallo-Romans. Nor were the invasions a
cause of Rome's decline. Following Bury's lead, Dill points
to the nature of the Roman state as source of its own demise.

Since this was so, Dill welcomes the change of power in Gaul,
but only because it was balanced there by the moderating

 

1“Samuel Dill, Roman Society (London, 1926), p. 3.
1513111, Pe 26e

41

influences of the Church and monastery. In an echo of
Kingsley, he writes:
Above all, the institution bridged the gulf .
between the ancient and the modern world an

d
saved from the wreck of a classical civilization
some of its more precious treasures. It is

difficult to imagine what form modern civili-
zation would have taken, or how long its
development might have been delayed, if ancient

literature and the fading trad tion of its
culture had perished utterly.1

Kingsley, Fustel de Coulanges and Dill are visibly

advancing theories associated with the German or French
national schools. Each makes use of the deterministic
principle and each emphasizes evolution over the older
conceptions of revolution. To this extent they can be
associated with positivism. Bury is also a professer of
positivism in that he is convinced of the evolutionary
order of events in the Later Empire to the point that

he writes of ”contingent” events. But another influential
historian, John Edwin Sandys, is an exception. He is not
a positivist. Indeed he seems to return to Gibbon for
inspiration, although actually he is One of a continuous
line of classical scholars, who since the Renaissance,
have studied and edited the writings of the Greeks and
Latins. I

Sandys, author of a History ef glaesical Scholarship,

was an intellectual historian concerned exclusively with

classical literature. He could, and did, presume it

 

16Dill, p. 368.

'. t'l.‘

sit!!!“ and! mat each“. h

\

‘

42

unnecessary to provide more than a minimal historical
background for his subjects, since the authoritative narra-
tive for most of the period he covers was provided by a
history which was common knowledge for his readers, Gibbon's
Beeline ang tall. It is possible that Sandys viewed his
work as a supplement to the Gibbon and similar narratives,
as it is certain his knowledge of history was largely
derived from Gibbon's work.

Furthermore he also thought it was safe to assume the
readers of a history of classical scholarship would be fa—
miliar with many of the writings of the authors studied.
Therefore a survey which is otherwise superficial would have
value as a reference they might turn to for bits of infor-
mation. No doubt his sympathy with a potential readership
was accurate. His book went through four editions in rapid
succession, and his idea gave rise to a series of similar
surveys of classical literature just as it was itself a

product of such a series.17

or relevance to our theme is his attitude towards~ and
interpretation of the letters of the Later Roman Empire and
the early Middle Ages. During the fifth century he notes a
shift in authorship in Latin letters from pagan to Christian,

I:For example, examine Hector M. and Nora K. Chadwick,
The Growth of Literature (New York, 1932); Pierre 0. de

LaBrIoIIe, HIsto and I terature of Christianit from
Tertullian to Boethius (New York, 1925); Frederick J. E.
Raby, Histcr of Christian Latin Poet - from the

Be innIn s to ¥Ee CIose of the EIEHIe Iges (New York, 1927);
ans to the more recent works of Ernest Robert Curtius,

Euro ean Literature and the Latin Middle A es (New York,
I953) and H. H. EoIgar, The UIassIcaI Heritage (New York,

1954):

 

43

although he attached no particular significance to this shift.
In the fifty years following the "fall" of the Western Empire
in 476, he believes a transition from the ancient to the medi-
eval world occurs. The keys to this transition are Boethius
and Cassiodorus. Boethius is the last of the Romans still
able to understand classical language and literature. He is
also the first to interpret his understanding in a manner
useful to the Middle Ages.18 Boethius is an "intermediary".
He is nostalgic, favoring the declining days of the Empire.
Cassiodorus, in contrast, "looks forward to the dawn of the
Catholic Middle Ages."19 They are alike, however, in that
they both prevent the tradition of the past from being
eclipsed by the onrushing barbarians. With the death of
Boethius in 429, Sandys believes the ancient world can proper-
ly thought to have ended and the Middle Ages begun. From that
date and until the revival of scholarship under Charlemagne,
an irreversible decadence set in, which reached its greatest
depths during the seventh century.20
While the gaze of Sandys looks to the flowering of classi-
cal soholarship during antiquity, that of Ker 'looks forward
to the dawn of vernacular literature in the twelfth century'.
For with the twelfth century the term "Dark is no longer appli-

cable to medieval literature. The intervening period between

then and the

18John E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship
(New York, 1958), I, p. 253.

19
2O

 

Sandys, I, p. 269.
Sandys, I, p. 450.

44

invasions was also not, without importance. Ker believed
the sixth and ninth centuries to be periods in which con-
siderable creative literature was written. The turn of the
sixth is one of decline and the ninth one of growth. Each
is measured against the themes of freedom and individuality
Ker finds characteristic of the vernacular writings of the
twelfth century.21 Boethius and the other writers of the
sixth century are important in that they sustain something
of the classical tradition. The Irish and English of the
seventh century are important in that they kept this tra-
dition alive. But what was of real value during these
”Dark" centuries were the efforts of the Teuton to free
himself of the bonds of a crippled latinity, and express
his native creativity.22
His success in the use of allegory, mythology and
legend distingutralthe Teuton from the Roman, who was
slaviehly devoted to classical models. Pulgentius and the
Mgralia by Gregory are examples of the allegorical artist
and art, an art that Ker defends as only slightly inferior
to the more brilliant literature of the Greeks or the
Renaissance. Ho literature of the “Dark“ ages is more
revealing or more representative of the early medieval

mind than that of the historians of that era. The genius

of Gregory of Tours or of Bede is often revealed by the

 

ZIVilliam Paton Ker, The Qark Ages (New York, 1958),
PD 0 13.17 e

22Ker, pp. 26-33.

45

history they write, but they are unfairly penalized by labels
of mediocrity for faults in language, composition or poor
judgment. These were limitations imposed on them by the
adverse conditions of an age in flux. Comparing their talent
for history with that of the Romans after the second century,
Ker praises their originality and their sense for the "free
idiomatic narrative" that distinguish Froissart or Snorri
Sturlison.23

Ker like Sandys is an intellectual historian, but his
inspiration comes from the German and French historians, who
under the influence of Romanticism, had intensively studied
medieval literature. What historical background Ker provides,
is, however, drawn from the positive historians of his own
generation. He proposes that early medieval writers were
transmitters striving to assume the freedom of literary
expression evident among medieval men of letters. He implies
that historical processes involve the struggle between thesis
(a stifling latinity) and antithesis (Teutonic genius) which
eventually produce a synthesis (free, popular vernacular

literature).
Taylor attempts to describe the "medieval mind" as the

result of a similar historical process, this time concerning
a more complicated combination of ”elements” than those which

make up literature alone. For Taylor sudden or cataclysmic

reversals are impossible in history. He observes: "Nothing

 

23Ker, pp. 33. 76-77 and 85-100.

46

passes away, and very little quite begins, but all things
‘change; and so the verity of social and political.phenomena
lies in the 'becoming', rather than in any temporary
phase--"24 The significance of the decline of the Empire
is not that the Ancient world is coming to some sort of end,
but in that it signals a transition of major proportions
during which another era is "becoming”.

It is Taylor's contribution to document the movement
of medieval beginnings from its lower level of potentiality
(during the early Middle Ages) to the higher level of
actuality (under the Carolingians). During this transition
cultural life was depressed and decadent, but within it
were theelements which constitute the Middle Ages. There
were three of these elements: Pagan antiquity, Christian
antiquity and the ”diverse and manifold capacities of the
medieval peoples.” Beginning with the Patristic Age these

elements co-existed but were not as yet co-equals. The
Middle Ages began when all three were Joined in active
participation under the Carolingians.25
Cultural history becomes under Taylor’s guidance the
measurement of interaction between three cultures (”ele-
ments”) within the diverse political divisions of 'Europe'.

He observes that the 'Bas Empire' was the center of

 

24

 

 
 

Henry Osborn Taylor, The Medieval Mind, A History
Develo ment of Thou ht and Emotion in the Midd e
m “hr 83, g I, Fe 12 e

2513,101‘, I, PP. 4-6.

47

Christian and Pagan Antiquity but was never barbarized.
Rather Classical civilization declined as it absorbed the
invaders, and remained degraded until the Renaissance of
the thirteenth century. .Spain resembled closely the
pattern of Italy until the Moorish invasions in the barly
eighth“ century altered the scene. Southern France
developed in the fashion of Italy while Northern France
was wholly barbarized in the Merovingian era. But the
Franks willingly imitated the language, law and Religion
.of the Latins; the result was a mixture of both antiquity
and the Barbarian. Germany and England were influenced to
the least extent by Latin antique culture and for a time

Christianity was only partially assimilated as a foreign

and alien culture.26

Christianity was the key to unification of the three
cultures. The Patristic writers infused the pagan with the
Christian sources, eventually combining the two cultures
into a new 'Empire'. In the north the barbarian looked
upon this Empire with ”awe” making antiquity everywhere
acceptable. The energies of the Christian'transmitters”
were used ”neither to produce an extension of knowledge,
nor originate substantial novelties either of thought or
imaginative conceptions."27 They extended themselves rather

in creating new forms in which the old could be presented

 

27

26Taylor, I, pp. 6-12 and 88-120.

Taylor, I, p. 13.

48

to a Christian world, in the making. Until the seventh centu-
ry these contributions added to the content of Christian

literature, but after Gregory, learned men attempted only
to digest this literature. Carolingian scholars merely
reshuffled this material without recasting it.28
Taylor's essay completes the first great Juncture in
the scholarship of the early Middle Ages. With him the
nineteenth century comes to a close. For the first half
of the nineteenth century romanticism and nationalism were
the predominate motives dictating the nature of historical
exposition, but with the revolution of 1848, called by
some the ”watershed of the nineteenth century”,29 intel-
lectuals tended to reject romanticism. Until the First
World War historians looked to the empirical and scientific
suppositions behind positivism for the basis of their
historical interpretation. Historical positivism was
generally nationalistic, but perhaps its most visible
characteristic was the deterministic form of evolutionism
it alone espoused. With the exception of Sandys, a series
of historians advanced interpretations of early medieval
history that incorporated the deterministic principle
within an evolutionary explication of events.

 

28Taylor, I, pp. 15-16 and 207.

29$ee Geoffrey Bruun, who in the very title of his
monograph, and cacti n 184 -18 2: a Mid-

genturz Eatershed New York, 195 . give evidence of this
es s.

CHAPTER III
EARLY APPLICATIONS
OF THE TRANSITIONAL INTERPRETATION
is the Romanticism and Idealism of the earlier part

of the nineteenth century proved unwarranted, Newtonian
physics and laplacian determinism were smugly accepted.
Reinforced by Darwinism and positivism, science even in
history dominated the latter half of the nineteenth century.
But Just as positivism featured the application of the new
fields of social science, anthropology, psychology and
political science to society the fruits of scientific

?
discoveries, its very presuppositions were called into

question by advances in science and the discoveries of
new fields of investigation. Biologists advanced the theory
of 'sport' undermining the purely deterministic nature of
Darwinism. Certain cultural anthropologists discovered
that societies were in all externals equals rather than
somehow arranged in a hierarchy as the Darwinists had
predicted. Sierames Frazd25. The Golden_§gugh, found
that many Christian practices had their counterparts in
more primitive societies that were otherwise unrelated.
The Russian Ivan Pavlov, while working with dogs, found
animal behavior could be conditioned by its environment,
implying that human responses were not dependent upon an

individual's heredity alone. A Viennese physician,.

50

Sigmund Freud, discovered that many types of behavior among
humans were motivated by the subconscious desires of the

mind, revealing man was not a purely rational being after

all.1

From the view that man was not essentially a rational
being, which in itself was only a scientific attempt at
better understanding human behavior, it was but a short
step to emphasize and cultivate the irrational, to stress
the will, intuition, impulse and emotion--in a word return
to Romanticism. Psychologists seemed to teach that what
was called reason was often disguised rationalization.
Ideas were the products of conditioning and thus were
controlled by one's class or race or nationality. Once
these ideas become fixed, no amount of reason is likely to
change them. Thus man was not only irrational in some of
his behavior, he was basically "anti-intellectual”.

Romanticism, irrationalism or 'anti-intellectualism'
do not reflect, however, the complete revulsion early
twentieth century intellectuals directed towards the
'materialism', 'mechanism' and 'naturalism' of nineteenth
century positivism. They proceeded to demonstrate the
patent falseness of the philosOphic assumptions of posi-
tivism. They abhorred materialism, although there were few

positivists, including Ludwig Feuerbach, who were unqualified

 

1Hughes, pp. 105-113; Crane Brinton, The Shaping of the
n nd (New York, 1959). PP. 213-25; Hector Hawton,

Philoso h for Pleasure éfireenwich 1961) pp. 138-153; I. M.
c , n m a ro can Philoso h , trans. Donald
Nicholl and Karl Aschenbrenner (Berkeley, 1961), pp. 10-29.

51'

materialists. Around 1900 new theories of physics brought

into question the belief in a mechanistic universe governed
by fixed laws. Scientists like Pierre and Marie Curie and
Wilhelm Roentgen discovered that some forms of ”matter" had
radioactive properties that behaved outside the laws of
Newtonian physics. In 1901 the German physicist Max Planck
suggested that energy was matter composed of-atoms or parti-
cles called quanta. Planck noted light was composed of such
quantum matter. The need for revision of the mechanistic
cosmology was satisfied in 1915 when Albert Einstein advanced
his theory of relativity which denied the immutability of
space and time in which physical events occur. Advances in
the life sciences during this same time span were also
revolutionary. Naturalism was no longer considered tenable
as science increasingly penetrated theeflsmentary composition
and functioning of living things.2

With the discovery that positive science was both
vulnerable and in need of change, a reassessment of the
nature of historical thought became necessary. Such a re-
orientation was initiated by Jacob Burckhanfi;(1818-1897),
a Swiss historian, who rejected outright the idea of
progress so familiar to Bury and Taylor. ”Neither man's
spirit nor his intellect has demonstrablyimproved in the
period known to history,” he wrote.3 It is the historian's

 

2Hughes. pp. 392-404.

3Jacob Burckhardt, Force and reedom: Reflections on
Histo , ed. James H. Nichols (New York, 1953 e p. 21.

52

task to discover the "style" of a particular period. He

should find the quality of cultural life and relationships
among institutions which give a distinctive character to

that period. If the historian would rise above his petty
partisan national feelings he might discover "the great and
grievous riddle of life”, which is what history is all
about.4 But in his own day, Burckhardt found only a world
in crisis, tottering on the brink of decay and certain dis-
aster. He hoped that omt of the disorder and chaos, a new
dwelling would be built in which the human spirit could

live freely, a hope he sustained without the consultation

of history.5

Wilhelm Dilthey, a student of the Ranks school and a
German philosOpher, insisted that historical study gained
nothing from the imitation of scientific methodology. The
historian applying scientific observation to the study of
man presumes history to possess the same inner sense of
order others have observed in nature. But history has
never any order, other than that imposed on its externals
by the historian. True history is that which is discerned
by the "living, artistic process of understanding”,6 as
opposed to that by some pseudo-scientific method. Events
of the past gain their meaning when re-lived by the artist-

 

l‘Burckhardt, p. 88

5Burckhardt, p. 369

6Wilhelm Dilthey, Pattern and Meanin in Histor , ed.
H. P. Hickman (New York, 195i). P. 55.

. 53

historian, because they enlarge his understanding of the

milieu in which they once occurred.7

The influence of Burckhardt and Dilthey were trans-
mitted to the English-speaking world by the English
philosopher and historian, Robin George Collingwood, author
of the Idga of History. For Collingwood the historian's
task was to discover the thoughts which motivated the events
of the past. To do this the historian must re-think them
in his own mind. ”The history of thought, and therefore
all history, is the reenactment of past thoughts in the
historian's own mind."8 Man is only rational "in a flickering
and dubious manner”, but what he has in place of rationality
is an awareness of himself asan historical creature.9 He
must affirm the prejudices of his own day rather than fear
them as had Ranke. For the very questions he wishes history
to answer are provided by contemporary events. By reca-
pitulation of the thoughts of the past, the historian will
achieve a deeper awareness and a possible useful solution
to present problems.

Collingwood retained confidence in the secular nature
of society and in the empiricism of the positivists, but he
discarded their scientific and deterministic preconceptions.

Just as the French revolution had signified the destruction
of a society predicated on custom, class and tradition, so

 

7Dilthey. Pp. 152-58.

8Collingwood, p. 215.

gcollingwood, p. 227.

54

the First World War signified a similar erosion of society.
For thinking men the First World War dramatized the product
of secularization and democratic aspiration to be political
and economic nationalism and a new barbarism. During the
nineteenth century the absence of a firm moral authority to
direct the passions of men forced intellectuals to seek
authority from the destiny of his nation or class. The
nation replaced the Church as the institution which gave
Il'nc purpose and meaning. And the World War showed with
inescapable logic the tragedy of man's devotion to nation-

hood.10

Historians writing after the war are noticeably less
insistent upon tracing the fortunes of single nations
through history. Nor do they approach historical subjects
prejudiced by a national point of view. Often they assume
a contrary position, pleading internationalism. The benefits
of this new attitude with respect to early medieval studies
are considerable. After 1920 an increasing number of
historians will be concerned with the development of a
. medieval or European civilization in the centuries following
Rome's collapse. Interest in intellectual and cultural
history will become everywhere more apparent. Also con-
siderably less emphasis will be placed upon the chaotic
nature of the early medieval period, andznre upon its

transitional nature.

 

1°Sm1th. pp. 95-98; Hughes. pp. 336-91.

55

Once the historian has purged himself of the cata-
clysmic theory of historical change, it is possible for him
to assume one of several transitional interpretations.
During the twentieth century at least three distinct
hypotheses as to the nature of one such transitional period,
the early Middle Ages, may be discerned. The first two of
these are evident in the following chapter. The first
portrays transition without creativity and the second
suggests transition to mean change, but makes no estimate
. of whether the change is progressive or retrogressive.

One of these transitional interpretations was provided
by Fredinand Lot, a Frenchman who wrote his history in a
nee-Romantic fashion. He first published the study under
consideration in 1921 some eight years after it was begun.
In time and in mental outlook he is the first of the post-
war generation. Like J. B. Bury, his emphasis is upon the
late Empire, its collapse and subsequent division. His
major contributions are made in understanding the third
and fourth centuries, but after that he assumes the con-
ventional response of his predecessors. For example, he
(insists, in opposition to Bury, that by 476 the Roman
Empire in the West had ended.11 And he concludes his

discourse on the Franks with these words:

 

llFerdinand Lot, _The End'of the Ancient vergd and the
in the Middle A es, trans. Philip and Mariette

Leon (New York, 1961), p. 215.

56

Hence the entry of the barbarians into the
Roman World, under whatever form it took place,
did not succeed in regenerating the ancient
world or replacing it by better apolitical

forms. . . . after we have had aglimpse, in
our texts, of the terrible corrup ion of these

times, it is impossible to see in it more than

a theme for declamation. . . . The history of
their petty kingdoms and their feuds contains

nothing which deserves to detain us. 12
However conventional Lot may have been, he is no apolo-
gist for the Empire. He readily recognizes its weaknesses

and its failures. At one point he writes:

The Empire was destined to perish through its
internal sores and through the dissolution of
all its vital forces and not through the fault
of any military organization. Ten centuries of
corruption and three of despotism had brought
the old society to a state of moral and material
destitution. . . . To sum up everything in a
word, Rome had been ruining herself constantly

for four centuries and in her pecuniary ruin
were dragged down all her political resources.13

Lot goes on to argue that in the third century a crisis
occurred from which there was no return. That crisis pre-

cipitated a dramatic change in the constitution of Roman

society, annihilating some institutions, and giving certain
others which later presume a medieval nature their beginning.

”This return to natural economy, after the arrest of monetary

economy, already marks the economic middle ages. Politically

and socially, it is the introduction to the Middle Ages}14

Similarly the establishment of Christianity as a state

 

13Lot,'pp. 84-85.
”Lot, p. 84.

57

Church by Constantine proved to be the factor which led to
the Roman ecclesiastical organization and potent political
responsibilities of the Church in following centuries. It
is Lot's point that with the crisis of the third century
institutions began to change into their medieval form.

If social, economic and political institutions were
greatly altered in response to the crisis of the third
century, this was even more true for Roman thought and

culture. ”Speaking generally, after the second century A.D.,

art lost its qualities of purity and taste extremely

15

rapidly.“ Classical art, even in imitative forms, did

not endure the onslaught of the third century. Its tech-
nique underwent profound changes, and finally was extinguished
under Constantine. ”In this reSpect, the Middle Ages began
in the fourth century."16
The deterioration of literature was no less rapid than
that of the arts. "The third century is a literary Sahara."17
But from Constantine forward to the beginnings of the fifth
century a renewal in Latin literature rescues an otherwise
disappointing literary period for Lot. But there existed
no possibilities of sustaining even there brief renewal. As
in art, literature was a pastime for a very small circle of

initiated persons, and this group was given to the dissipating

 

15Let, p. 137.
16Let, p. 137.
17Lot, p. 151.

58

tedium of imitating existing masterpieces. The group itself

grew smaller as Christianity made inroads into its numbers.

And Christianity was not only re-employing the best Latin

writers for its purposes, it remolded the tastes of mankind,

making ancient literaturetmmmfihy of study in Christianjhomes.18
Christian literature suffers from the same malady which

destroyed that of the pagans. It succeeded a literary herit-

age too great to be equaled, and too great to be altered.

Classicism dictated the single worthy subject of contemplation.

It thrived on generalities, while rejecting the particular

and the personal. By elevating the objective, over and

above the subjective it was assured an early death, a death

of monotony and barreness. Christianity perpetuated this

fault by contemplating the universal, God.19 All that

sustained Classicism in the last centuries of the Empire,

was its feeling for the unity of civilization defended by

the otherwise decadent grammarian or rhetorician. When in

the sixth century they recede from view, ”the unity of ‘

'Romania' was to disappear for ever.”20
Ancient science was even more dependent than art or

literature. upon the Greek genius for speculation, chiefly
in mathematics. It was, however, a creature of reason,

detached from observation and experimentation, and like

 

LOt, PP. 135.57e
20Lot, p. 166.

#18

59

philosophy, its twin, it was subordinated to the presuppo-
sitions of classicism. When confronted with religion, both
philosophy and science were unable to compete on equal terms.
Christianity and the other religions coming from the East
could stir men's minds and at the same time offer them
answers to the problems of life and death that were far more
satisfying than those of the Greeks. The new and soon
victorious religious spirit was after the first century
intolerant of Greek thought and submerged it beneath its
more vital mysticism.21
Classical Latin literature had begun to deteriorate
with the Antonines. From then forward the rare examples of
literary production are “masks concealing decay.” ”It seems
that the men of this period are incapable of producing any-
thing whatsoever out of themselves, and that they have
nothing to say."22 The Church Fathers disapproved of

classical letters, and this attitude continued throughout

the Middle Ages. But as they prbduced literature of their
own, the Christians, were influenced perhaps to too great a
degree by the classical commentaries on history, philosophy
and science. No effort was made to preserve these commen-
taries, however. Only the Irish gave refuge to the culture

of the ancient world.23

 

21Lot, pp. 167-70.

22Lot, p. 372.
23 -
Lat, pp. 371-85e

60

After the sixth century and extending into the tenth
and twelfth centuries there existed an unrelieved pattern
of stagnation and indifference to thought and letters. Lot
inventories in turn philosophy, theology, science, language,
literature, education and art. All are dismissed as without
progress and in most cases suffering from even greater
declines. In this estimation, Lot is above all consistent
with what he observed earlier with respect to the later
Empire. He is not unusually hostile to Christianity or to
the Church, and whenever possible gives it high praise. He
does have a point of view, however, which like that of
Gibbon, or more recently of Sandys, measures art or letters
against fixed and rather high standards. It would appear
that Lot uses the pure classical forms of the Greeks and
Augustan Romans as the backdrop to which all else is compared.
This is only in part true. For those aspects of culture
which pretend to be classical he draws the obvious comparison.
But his ultimate standard is not classicism, but a neo-
romanticism which is subjective, contemporary and in most
particulars opposed to classicism.

Lot is a child of the intellectual revolution suggested
elsewhere to have taken place after 1890. To it he owes his
comparative method of historical exposition and his preference
for the subjective. He also demonstrates the unusual atti-
tudes of Bergson towards cultural change. The experience

of change is a progressive and an irreversible process, a

succession of experiences of a very special sense. One

61

experience does not follow the other, the first ceasing to
exist when the next begins. They interpenetrate one another,
_the first living on into the second, and perhaps becoming
fused with it. Thus the ancient world passed into the
medieval, became a part of it, and never really ceased to
exist. Likewise the beginning of the medieval world was

not sudden; rather various medieval institutions began at
different times alongside the decline of ancient culture.

A contemporary to Lot, the Belgian historian Henri
Pirenne (1865-1935), deve10ped in the last twenty-five years
of his life a thesis which will forever be associated with
his name. At once unique and rather easy to grasp, it has
caught the papular imagination on a level which approximates
that of Gibbon. A great part of Pirenne's success is due to
his novel use of economic instruments which after the First
World War were held in great esteem, as exampled by the
writings of Beard in the United States. Pirenne was a
prolific writer, and his interests were broad. The one
feature common to all his work seems to be the great
emphasis he is willing to put on eoonomicissues. Of
particular and representative value is his shorter Medieval
Cities, which is based on a series of lectures delivered
before American universities in 1925, and the more detailed
'Mghgln§g_ggg_gh§£l§g§ggg, which was his last effort and was—
left incomplete at his death in 1935.

Comparison of the two texts suggests that as early as

.1925, and some claim as early as 1910, Pirenne had arrived

62

at his essential conclusions regarding the nature of early

medieval history. The major advantage of the later work is
in its fuller elaboration of details Pirenne believes will
give substance to his theory. Both works start with the
observation made earlier by Montalembert: the Empire was
essentially a Mediterranean "commonwealth”. This situation
required the Empire to defend its economy by maintaining its
mastery of the sea. Since to Pirenne the economy of'a nation
is the best and perhaps only important measure of well being,
he is willing to disregard political, social and cultural
events as indicators of Rome's "fall".24

Scattered depositions of emperors do not inform one of
the fortunes of the Empire, just as political control of the
West did not mean de-Romanization, as Bury and Bill had
clearly established. The civilization of the Empire
"outlived its authority.” "The Germanic tribes were unable,
and in fact did not want, to do without-it. They barbarized
it, but they did not consciously germanize it.”25 Important
Roman institutions such as the Church and certain political
structures the law and language and most visibly the com-
mercial activity of the Empire were uninterrupted by the

influx or political success of the Teutons. They as much

 

24Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities (New York, 1925),
pp. 1-6; Henri Pirenne, Mohammedfiand Chaplemagpe, trans.

Bernard Miall (New York, 1963), pp. 18-19 and 68.
25Pirenne, Medieval cities, p. 5.

63

as the Romans were interested in maintaining the order which

gave wealth to the conquered civilization.26
In the midst of the troubles, insecurity and misery

accompanying the invasions, the vitality of the ancient

world suffered unmitigated decline. Thus in the seventh

century a second series of invasions, those of Islam, were

able to engulf much of the Mediterranean, and thereby

decisively divide the world about that sea into three parts,

and leaving to the Moslem the commercial and military power.

So great was the impact of these invasions that they

“changed the face of the world. Its‘ZIslamflg7 sudden trust

had destroyed ancient Europe. It had put an end to the

Mediterranean commonwealth in which it had gathered strength."27

After 732, the resources of the East no longer available to .

them, the center of western civilization was shifted to the

north, to the minor but growing power, the Frankish Empire.28

In Mghggggd and Charlemagne, Pirenne shows the profound
influence Lot, with whom he regularly corresponded, had upon

his theory. It had been necessary for Lot not only to

formulate a thesis, but also to survey all aspects of a

civilization to see if that thesis held true. To this

mandate Pirenne was willing to comply. ‘He responded in his

' %Pirenne, Medieval 501ties, pp. 5- 6, Pirenne, Mohammad
W. pp. 33-5
27Pirenne, Medieval Cities, p. 15.

28Pirenne, Medigval Cities, pp. 15-18; Pirenne
Mohammed and Charlemagne, pp. 1 7-64.

 

 

64

final study of the period with various chapters devoted to
intellectual, cultural and social parallels to his general
theory.

Beginning in the third century the classical world
entered into a period of long and continuous decline. The
invasions in no way initiated this decline although they
may have helped to perpetuate it. The attitude of the
barbarians was the same towards the intellectual and cultural
affairs as it had been towards the political or economic
system. They wished to maintain the existing order of

things. Scholars before, during and after the invasions

read "no literature but the traditional literature."29

After the third century there continued a common interest

in the study of grammar and rhetoric, and in the use of
Latin both in the ancient and in the new monastic schools.
At the same time the efforts of the writers were directed
either to preserving or to emulatig the ”traditional
literature”, assuring continuity with ancient thought.

In short the invasions did not modify the
character of the intellectual life in the basin
of the western Mediterranean. It we cannot
say that literature continued to flourish, it
did at least continue to vegetate. . .although
no new element made its appearance until the
moment when the influence of the Anglo-Saxons
be an to make itself felt. The decadence of
th 3 literature was manifest, but the old
tradition survived. But the contribution of
th; garmans to this life of the intellect was
n .

 

29Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, pp. 118-19.

Pirenne refuses to become more explicit on this as to what
constituted traditional literature.

30Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, p. 123.

65

Pirenne makes no effort to apologize for the ”Dark
Ages”. It is his theory that “the Frankish Empire was fated
to lay the foundations of the EurOpe of the Middle Ages. But

the mission which it fulfilled had as an essential prior

condition the overthrow of the traditional world-order."31

It would appear that Pirenne's sole purpose in his
brief sketches of the Church, art and the 'secular character
of society' was to demonstrate, as he had with literature
the continuous Roman constitution of western culture until
the eighth century. The personnel of the Church, for
example, was not only Roman but recruited from the aris-
tocracy. Monasticism was a creation of the Mediterranean
world, and was also peopled by the Latins when it began its
conversion of the_north. ”The home of living Christianity"
remained in the south, where the Romanized and "highly
cultivated” missionaries such as "Augustine and his com-
panions" were trained. or the new Christian literature
Pirenne admits a rather singular departure from the past.
Nonetheless it had originated in ”Romania", and was used to
edify the clergy and common folk with respect to the
Christian-Roman tradition.32 -

 

31Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, pp. 17-18. Moss
makes the same contention in 1935. but for the Catholic
historians such as Schnurer and Pickman, the overthrow of
the "traditional world-order" must occur in the fifth
century to be consistent with the "new" status of the Church,
and to throw the Church into preper historical relief.

32Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, pp. 124-29.

66

As in other respects the Germanic invasions did not
precipitate any change in the art of the Mediterranean
basin. The Germans once installed in these lands did not
evolve an original art, as had the Irish and the Anglo-
Saxons in their distant kingdoms to the north.

In shbrt, the wholly Oriental art which came

by way of the Mediterranean encountered the art
of the Barbarians, which was also Oriental, so

that there was a mutual interpenetration, the
art coming from the South exercising a certain
predominance, as its technique was more highly

developed.33

Pirenne has but one difficulty here, and that is assuming
Oriental art is what he says it is, to explain how the
obvious absence of classical influences corraborates his
general theory. His solution involves two assumptions.
After the third century classical art forms were largely
replaced by the oriental mixture most evident in Byzantine
art in the later centuries. And secondly, this continuity
of oriental influences was interrupted once a break was
affected with Constantinople under the Carolingians, and

the Irish and Anglo-Saxon arts assume greater importance.34

‘ As Pirenne's books appeared in the 1920's they had an
electric effect on the historical scene. As had Fustel de
Coulanges in 1872, Pirenne challenged the conventional. His
studies demanded intense and immediate attention. For many
there was much that was suspicious about the simplicity of

 

33Pirenne,‘_M9hammed and Charlemagne, p. 132.
3APirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, pp. 129-135.

67

Pirenne thesis, and others were stimulated by its freshness.
Thus a debate which still in progress today began.

There is little doubt as to the importance of this
debate. It is not-over recondite or insignificant issues.
Generally it represents an older position being challenged
by a younger generation. The older position is sympathetic
with the humanistic position of yore, giving all possible
credit to the Graeco-Roman civilization, and is hostile or
at best neutral towards Christianity. For Lot and his
predecessors it was a tragedy that classical models were
icompromised by the barbarian. Resulting from this attitude
was a rather indifferent attention given to the early Middle
Ages, and a steadfast refusal to give to it a character of
its own. For some it was the mere extension of the empire
(Bury, Dill, Sandys and most notably Pirenne) and for others
a period of confused change and chaos justly earned by the
barbarian who had interfered with the workings of the
ancient world (Lot). Nothing of value was accomplished by
the barbarian (Dill, Sandys and Lot), and for Pirenne they
seemingly did not even exist.

Contemporaries of Lot and Pirenne made a serious
effort to combine the better points of both positions into
a cogent interpretation of what happened during the early
medieval period. It seemed fairly evident that there had
been decline in the intellectual and cultural standards of

the classical world after the third century, but that this

68

decline did not involve a complete collapse until some later
date. It seemed to these historians. to be investigated in
the next few pages. that they must find some date after
which the collapse is rather marked or at least unrelieved,
and to provide some meaning for the period preceding that
collapse.

Among the first to address himself to these problems
was the American historian Edward Kennard Rand, a Professor
of Latin at Harvard. Not very familiar with Lot or Pirenne,
and in any case concerned with a problem they largely
ignored, he looked to Taylor and Charles Homer Haskins for
inspiration. He found in Taylor the outlines of a solution
to the dilemma suggested above. That is, the period of
greatest import to the understanding of early medieval
history is the Patristic Age which had immediately preceded
it. Most particularly he thought he found in the Christian
fathers of that age the foundations for succeeding centuries.

It is because these Church fathers viewed the world
in which they lived as in need of serious and thorough
reform, that they overhauled 'Antique' culture, transforming
it into a culture anticipating that of the Middle Ages. As
events would have it these fathers were in a position of
intellectual and religious leadership for nearly two hundred
years. They assumed during that time the role formerly
reserved for pagans in directing the avenues of thought,
education and culture of the Romans. Thus their ideas

concerning the reform of ancient learninglwns destined to

i. _—'

69

be influential in succeeding years, and because of an
absence of creativity in these areas after the sixth centu-
ry for generations to come.35
As reformers, the Churchmen. of the Patristic Age
expressed certain prejudices. They were hostile to the
more obvious vestiges of paganism, as exampled by their
condemnation of rhetoric, philosophy and heresy. Conse-
quently much of their literature was in the form of tracts
against the pagans and against the intellectual tradition
from whence they came. But hostility is only the most
visible manifestation of deeper urge to remake society
after their own image. Thus to convert the unbeliever,
apologetics and other propagandist letters were in general
evidence. And for those who were making up a rapidly
growing majority, a huge corpus of literature designed
to improve their Christianity was written. Since earlier
Christian literature'waslsrgdy defensive and reflected
the minority position of the church, it was necessary to
create vestiges of church organization on a literary as
well as physical plane. To accomplish this Augustine,
Ambrose and Jerome with a supporting cast of dozens wrote
volumes defining church dogma. But it soon became
apparent that in an age replete with heresy that too few

Christians were being 'educated' for the world of a

 

35Edward Kennard Rand, Foundermof the Middle Ages
(New York, 1957). pp. 34-69.

70

Christian, and those who were being educated were often

corrupted by the paganism which permeated the schools.36
For Jerome and Augustine the source of Corruption was

the schools themselves, but others perceived the problem

to be in the content of the education they provided.
Classical education had a rather fixed and universal
program. Included in its curriculum were the basics of

the 'trivium' and 'quadrivium'. To teach these subjects

the pagan educators relied upon classical literature. The‘

Christian reformers directed their attack upon this non-

Christian literature, hoping to replace it with textbooks
of their own authorship. The most successful of the
”Christian" texts was that of Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis
Mgrcurii'et Philologiae. By making such substitutions the
sources of pagan thought were gradually eliminated, which
explains in part the great decline in pagan Latin litera-
ture during the fifth and sixth centuries. As the pagan
content of the schools was reduced, however, the viability

of the schools themselves suffered. It became necessary,

and for most Christians, desirable, to found new schools

supported by the rapidly growing monastic foundations in
the West. It was to accomodate this revolution in edu-

cation that Benedict and Cassiodorus made room within their

rules for the intellectual training of monks.:57

 

36Rand, pp. 50-181.
37Rand. pp. 218-251.

71

On a different plane, but nonetheless under the influ-
ence of Taylor and Hand and certain specialists such as
de Labriolle, de Wulf and Gilson, is Ahfiistory of Chgggtian
Thought by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. By means of extended
essays on each of several Christian fathers representative
of their age, McGiffert demonstrates in greater and more
profound detail the conclusions drawn by Rand. Antici-
pating Pickman he assigns to Augustine a pivotal role in
Christian thought. Although Augustine belonged to the
Ancient world, it was due to his influence that the spirit
of Middle Ages replaced that of antiquity. In response to
his provoking arguments man ceased to be the center of the
universe. In place of man was God, who used men as His
tools to carry out His will. Men's and in life was to
glorify Him, their greatest ambition to serve Him. Hence
the Church as the institution in which God was glorified,
and the monastery where He was served became the most

important social institutions after the fifth century.38

As the importance of the Church was enhanced contro-
versy arose over ways in which it could be better used to
serve as means for man's personal salvation. When the
effort to subordinate the Church to the needs of individuals
failed in the fifth century, then the medieval Church
emerged triumphant under Gregory. Gregory encouraged the

powers of the Church be increased so that it might best

 

38Arthur Cushman McGiffert, History of Christian
Tpought (New York, 1933). II, pp. 71-125.

72

convey the Christian ideal to men everywhere. Gregory
simplified Church doctrine so that it can be taught to the
poorly learned. He emphasized homilies, a Pastoral Rule
morality and monasticism as means of missionary education.
Thus by 604 Church dogma was clear and the position of the
Church comprehensively defined. Church dogma and doctrine
were fixed by Gregory after Augustinian and Patristic
teachings. As sources for his theology, and consequently
that of the early Middle Ages, Gregory looked to the
various Councils, the Church fathers (especially Augustine)
and to the notions of the people (such as angels, demons,
extreme piety and excessive good works).39

After the death of Gregorg,McGiffert resumes his
narrative with John Scotus Erigena and Anselm. He argues
that the century and half that he skips did not produce
a significant theologian of the Church, and that in fact
Ithere was comparatively little theological activity."4O
With a sentence he dismisses, as had Rand, and as will
Duckett, the practical theologies of Bede and Boniface,
and the whole of the northern missionary movement, without
which it is difficult to imagine the Carolingian Renaissance.
His attitude towards the seventh and eighth centuries
closely resembles that of de Hulf and Gilson, Catholics

who were writing about this same time. They, as had Taylor,

 

39Moeirrert, II, pp. 144-65.
40McGiffert, II, p. 178.

73

focused their attention upon the Middle Ages. With this
later period, McGiffert demonstrates his affection for

Collingwood and for Burckhardt. He describes the Middle
Ages as ”transitional”, ”diverse”, "original", "creative"

and ”fresh". It was ”a time of growth and change on a

large scale and the greater part of it was marked by

”41 The sources for the

uncommon intellectual activity.
Middle Ages are to be found in the Patristic Age and
transmitted to it by the Church, the single vehicle of
learning after the sixth century.

With perhaps greater emphasis on Lot, but nonetheless
ardent in his defense of the role of the church in the

.creation of the civilization of the Middle Ages is Edward
Motley Pickman. An historian whose format is like that
used by Dill, he is avid in his use of footnotes and
dependent upon traditional authorities. He blends Lot
and Pirenne with Duohesne and the Catholic historians of
the nineteenth century. He is anxious to field; a course
independent from that established by the 'scientific'
histories of Dill and Bury. For example, he remarks that
in his day it was popular not to select any specific date
for the end of the ancient world and the beginning of the
Middle Ages. He goes on to suggest that any date between
400 and 476 would be equally meaningful. As Lot had
established, incipient feudalism, disorganization in the

 

41McGiffert, II, p. 165.

74

government of the Empire, economic depression, barbarian
influence and Christianity are easily discernable in the
fourth century. And as Pirenne suggested, a political
papacy, Merovingian decline, and the ascendency of Islam
were equally poignant features of the eighu1century.
Pickman discerns that between these two centuries it is
evident that the Middle Ages began. But since beginnings
are a continuous process the significant point of departure
is not in the origins of the Middle Ages, but in the time
the ancient world began its irrevocable decline. The
approximate measure for such a decline is for Pickman
found in Roman intelligence as opposed to Pirenne and
economics.

Thus the contemporaneousness of the great invasions
of the fifth century with the death of Augustine is to
Pickman the key to understanding when Rome "fell".
Augustine, "the most brilliant, profound, and enlightened
Greek or Roman since Aristotle,” directed his gggx of God,
"that last great work of‘antiquity,"43 to the problem of
the invasions, and his death seemingly signals their success.

Thus Pickman writes, "I like to think the Western Empire

fell on that day of the year 430 when, in Hippo, besieged

4
by the Vandals, her bishop Augustine died." 4 With

 

aeEdward Motley Pickman The Mind of Latin Christendom
(New York, 1938), I. pp. 288-89

0

4321ckman, I, p. 288.

44Pickman, I, p. 289.

75

venganne Pickman substitutes a figure great in intellectual
history for the symbol formerly assigned to a political
figure, Romulus Augustulus, or to an economic event, the
closing of the Mediterranean.

Pickman consistently substitutes intellectual and
cultural events for the often_overplayed developments in
political or economic spheres, for this is the substance
of his thesis. The political hence material empire of the
Romans decayed, fell apart,disappeared, and in its place
arose the universal empire of the Church. The former had
lost its purpose, its only contribution was that it made
possible the rapid expansion of Christianity. Its disap-
pearance was of no great loss, but to the contrary, it was
a gain, for it freed Christianity from the Mediterranean
orientation of the Empire so that it could convert the
European world.

For Pickman the impersonal and material nature of
the Roman Empire represents the insignificance of these
factors in a truly Christian world. Just as the ideas
which live after Augustine symbolize the importance of
Christian Patristic thought to the creation of a new world
order. Indeed Pickman carries the investigation of Band
to its logical conclusion. If the Patristic age has
importance it lies in the evolution it wrought upon the
minds of men. Rand limited his argument to education and
poetry. Pickman believes that the Church fathers remolded

76

the whole makeup of man and gave to future centuries a "mind
'of latin Christendom”.45 ,

Yet a fourth study of the sixth century came from the
pen of Eleanor Shipley Duckett in 1938. Again the emphasis
is on the old giving away to the new, but this time due
emphasis is given to the divergent participatiOn in things
religious among the Italian, French and Irish. Her theme
is taken from Ker: ”almost everything that is common to
the Middle Ages, and much that lasts beyond the Renaissance,
is to be found in the authonsof the sixth century."46 That.
this theme is common to Taylor, Rand and Pickman has already
been demonstrated. It was Duckett's purpose to study the
impact diverse national attitudes had upon the sixth
century writers as opposed to presuming all belonged to
the sale universal order of thought as Rand and Pickman
evidently did. For as early as the sixth century the spirit
of nations had supplanted the universal order of the Empire.
In all the nations a ”new life” was in the making in the
sixth century and nowhere was this better revealed than in
things religious.

Arians were everywhere converted to Catholicism, the
Irish missionary converted Northern England and Augustine
southern England, Monasticism became a fixed feature of

life, and received its ”rule" from Benedict. The medieval

 

FESTickman, I, pp. 300-320.

46Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Gateway to the Middle Ages
Unn.Arbor, 1961), p. 101.

77

lyric, legend, myth and narrative were evidenced in the

literature of the sixth century. Boethius presaged the
scholasticism of medieval philosOphy and Cassiodorus
experimented with the medieval scriptorium. Finally Gregory
elevated the papacy to a position of leadership approximating
that achieved later by Hildebrand. I

For the writers of this century, and there were many,
the ancient ideals still lingered, as if a hangover from
the night before. The poetry of Fortunatus resembled the

ancients in meter and in attraction for Virgil, but he was

unable to write classical poetry worthy of the name. In
his emphasis on accent and rhyme, his deemphasis of quantity

and his preoccupation with themes of Christian activity and

the Church he anticipated the Latin poetry of the Middle

L893 0‘47

Duckett does not agree with Ker that it was poor Latin
that made poor writers of the early medievalist. Rather she

follows Taylor when she remarks of Fortunatus,

Yet for him, as for his fellows, this Latin finds

a compensation in a freshness of joy in living,
physical and spiritual, that is stimulating in its
picture of humanity, a reawakening to new life
that kge dying age of the Empire could never

know.
As admirable as her understanding of the sixth century

is, she like Rand shows no sympathy for the age immediately
following.

 

47Duckstt, PP. 271-312.
48Duckett, p. 311.

u"

78

Cassiodorus, Ennodius, Boethius: these are the

three last sounds from the train of Italy's
culture before it plunges into this long tunnel

of the Dark Ages. Flashes of light may oc-

casionally illuminate its buried course,48ut
they do little save reveal the darkness.

Many years later (1959) Duckett balanced this Judgment
of the seventh and eighth centuries by praising the monks
for their noble and saintly qualities in The Wandering
Saints of the Early Middle Age,. In her earlier work she

is attuned to the monastic movement in the sixth century as

 

symbolic of things to come. Stimulated by Rand's thesis
that the monastery represented the ”new" education of the
Middle Ages, she narrates the evolution of the monastic
movement in the sixth century, emphasizing the formation
of a monastic ideal conducive to learning and the study of
letters. The development of a rule for this purpose is
studied from Severinus, Cassiodorus, Cassian and Caesarius
to Benedict. Parallel developments in Ireland gave ground
for the substance of medieval monastic life when the two
movements met at Whitby}. The English monks gained from
the Romans a rule and from the Irish a missionary bent

and a fervor for learning.50

As the above pages indicate the impact of a World War
ended the nineteenth century reliance upon the authority
offered by nations. Rarely after World War I do historians

 

49Duckett, pp. 211-12.

5ODuckett. PP. 358-531; Eleanor Shipley Duckett, The

HBDQQIIDS Sajgla g: Ihfi Eézlz Middle Ages (New York, 19557,
pp 0 15-29 0

79

orient their writings about their national prejudices. The
War also seems to have terminated the positive school of
historical writing, and introduced with respect to early
medieval history a firm conviction that the period had
been transitional in nature. Lot for example, maintained
the transition to have begun in the third century, but he
found the period to be a regression from previously high
standards, and noted the decline has no point at which it
appeared to stop. Pirenne thought of the period as an
extension of the later Empire, which continued without
interruption until the end of the seventh century.

In an effort to find some terminal point for the
decline generally observed to have begun as early as the
third century, Rand, Pickman, McGiffert and Duckett suggested
the Patristic Age delimited the period of transition after
'which collapse had set in for a period of time. During
the Patristic Age a new culture was introduced to replace
the decaying Empire, and evidence for this new culture can
be found in literature, education and especially in the
development of monasticism and the Roman Church. Quite
possibly the most important century in this transitional
period is the sixth century during which Gregory and
Benedict set the tone of religious thought for the next

several centuries.

CHAPTER IV

MODIFICATIONS OF THE TRANSITIONAL INTERPRETATION

Within the decade in which Pirenne died his point of
view, that the early Middle Ages were a mere extension of

the ancient world, was substantially altered. But what
was offered as a replacement more closely resembled his
position than that of Lot, who had maintained the early
Middle Ages to be a retrogression compared to classical
culture. Among those historians following Lot and Pirenne
there existed a tendency to think solely in terms of
transition, but this concept is not so insignificant as
it first appears. Transition implies change, and refutes
Pirenne's contention that the Empire lasted to the end
of the seventh century. But transition does not imply
the changes that took place to be sudden, or even dramatic.
To the contrary, and this-is the essence of the point of
view represented by the following historians, there were
no dramatic improvements or innovations just as there had
been no precipitous decline after or during the invasions.
It had been the purpose of Catholic writers to
Justify the involvement of the Church in worldly affairs
since certain Romans had associated Christianity with the
sack of their city in 410. In this task they were rarely

and only temporarily successful. After the sixteenth
century and most obviously in the eighteenth century they

81

were beleaguered by a host of anti-clerical writers, but
defeat has often only encouraged greater efforts. One such
effort is that of Gustav Schnurer, who in three volumes
traces the relationship of Catholicism to culture throughout
the thousand year history of the medieval Church. The first
of these volumes appeared in 1925 in German and in 1956 in
an English translation and represents the narrative devoted
to the early Middle Ages. ’

In Schnurer's opinion the Church has consistently
advanced the intellectual achievements of mankind, and hence
has long associated itself with man's cultural life. Thus
his history of the Church and Culture in the Middle Ages

is primarily a narrative of how the Church advanced man s

”intellectual mastery of the goods at his disposal."1
Schnurer depicts the early Middle Ages as a period distinct

from antiquity. During this era the Church, freed from the
limitations the more powerful Roman state had imposed upon

it, created a civilization anticipatory of our own. From
its inception Christianity brought forth practices which
evidenced its ability to bridge over differences between

peoples and nations, for Christian doctrine gave a new
basis for a ”more profound and complete civilization."2
Romans and barbarians alike were encouraged to become

children of God, to submit their souls to the help of

1Gustav Schnurer, Church and Culture in the Middle
Aggg, trans. G. I. Undreiner (Paterson, New Jersey, 1956),

p. ix.

2Schnurer, p. 5.

. 1y.

82

divine grace. They were taught that before God all were
equal and hence relationships between men were given a new
dignity a concept that Burns and Bark adopt to suggest is
the basis for contemporary democracies.

RecOgnizing the need to provide an alternative to
Christianity as a cause of Rome's fall, Schnurer follows
Lot in noting that the factors which doomed the Roman state
to destruction were discernable as early as the third
century. These factors can be found in the body politic,
the military system, the economic situation and in the

legal system; that is so generally and so deeply there was
no way in which they could be remedied. It is therefore
incorrect to say the Roman state disappeared because “the
Christians failed to fulfill their duties: on the contrary,
it was due to the Christians that whatever Rome possessed
of permanent value was preserved."3 Furthermore, Schnurer
argues, the Church would not have been able to save from
catastrophe the important cultural features of the ancient
world "if the fossilized Roman Empire and corrupt Roman
society had continued to exist."4

As the Empire visibly suffered ”decay unto death" it

became the dream of certain Christians to build a new Rome
which would fulfill the Christian mission. Such was the

purpose of Ambrose and Augustine, states Schnurer. The
efforts of the Church fathers would have been for naught

 

3Schnurer, P. 24.

“Schnurer, p. 27.

83

in Schnfirer's estimation had not the Church taken custody

of their writings and faithfully transmitted them to later
generations. The crucial period came at the close of the
fifth century when a Roman power no longer existed outside
the Church to defend the culture of antiquity. This
crucial period lasted to the eighth century.5

Aside from the Church of Rome, the Benedictine order
established in the late sixth century was the institution
central to the maintenance of culture and the preservation
of the legacy of the ancients. For a time, from the fifth
to seventh centuries, the Christian Irish were the mission-
aries of the Church, and their work is no less important
because they did not follow Roman usages. With Gregory
the Great, however, the Benedictines increasingly became
instrumental in the conversion of the North, a step which
necessarily preceded the rise of an medieval Christian
order. Schnurer credits the Anglo-Saxon monks with the
conversion of Germany, the reform of the Frankish Church
and eventually bringing into close union the converted
peoples of EurOpe and the papacy.6

The important Juncture in Schnurer's narrative is
(reached as Boniface dies and Charlemagne assumes the
leadership of the Frankish kingdom. The mid-eighth
century is important, for at this time "the cultural

 

5Schnurer, p. 111.
6Schnurer, pp. 142-90 and 287—336.

84

community of the West had come into being.”7 It is also
important for it followed hard on the severance of the
Papacy with its Mediterranean orientation. Without the
papal support that was freely given to Charlemagne there
would have been little possibility for the flowering of
Christendom in the Middle Ages.

Clearly the themes of Schnurer stand in bold relief
against the cataclysmic attitudes of Gibbon or Lot, and
are in contrast with Pirenne's thesis that the declining
Empire endured until the eighth century. Schnurer does
not believe it correct to assessthe cultural level of
the early Middle Ages as low. Furthermore he believes
emphasis should be placed upon the superior culture that
during this time came into being.

Christopher Dawson, a Catholic of Welsh descent,
wrote The Making of Europe in 1931, the same year in which
Lot's book was published in English. His study takes on
an approach directly contrary to Lot's, however. Where
Lot emphasized a comprehensive narrative of facts, Dawson
emphasizes a teleological drive towards an end. Where
Lot offers balance and multifarious attack, Dawson over-

whelms one with a single point. As one of the neo-

romanticists, Lot demonstrates the best of early twentieth

century scholarship. Dawson on the other hand is influenced

 

7Schnurer, p. 418.

85

deeply by Croce and Collingwood. He disdains to write of
the rise of Church and Christianity as Schnurer did, but
aspires rather to provide a history "of the particular
culture that is ancestoral to our own."8 As a student of
Collingwood he believes modern man to be "conditioned" by
his historical past, and particularly by the nineteen
centuries since Christ. His specific interest is in the
period during which the European peeples came into contact
with higher civilization of Rome and acquired the creative
consciousness which today is recognized as European civi-

lization. This later term does not have the abstract

meaning given to it by Voltaire, it is a ”concrete social
9 A

organism.”
For reasons also observable in the writings of Lot,
Pirenne and Schnurer, Dawson has an expressed dislike for
history written from the nationalist point of view. This
point of view had in his estimation permeated all levels
of thought so that each nation was claiming for itself a
self-sufficiency that in truth it did'not possess before,
but even more certainly after the War. He condemns
nationalism for undermining the vitality of European life.
Although the League of Nations represented an international
spirit it frustrated any real attempts to achieve any sort

of European unity such as that accomplished in our time

 

8Christopher Dawson, The Making of Europe (New York,
1963) 9 p0 19s

9Dawson,‘ghe Making of_Europg, p. 22.

86

by the Common Market. Furthermore during the depression,
nationalism was encouraged by the economic rivalry arising

among desperate nations. As Dawson expressed it in another

book, UnderstandinggEurope, "Europe is a society of pe0ples;
that Europe is a spiritual unity, based on the tradition

of Christian culture.“10

Thus the true nature of EurOpe
is unity, not the national state. In order to reject the

false impression given by the national historians of the
nineteenth century, he thought it necessary to rewrite
history with the ”European point of view."11
In the long history of Europe there was but one age
in which Europe achieved a degree of unity, and that was
the age of 'Res publica Christiana'. For Dawson earlier

events were directed with the sole purpose of achieving
this ”medieval unity". As to the particulars of this
achievement he provides an outline which closely resembles
that given by Taylor. The several ingredients that were
to go into the making of Europe were politically the ‘

spirit of the Empire, religiously the community of
Christianity, intellectually the learning of the classics,

and socially the customs of the barbarians. These four .

elements first combined into a unity in the Carolingian

period, but that unity was premature and did not last when

10Christopher Dawson,_§nderstanding Europe (Garden
City, New York, 1960), p. 6.

11Dawson, Making of Europe, p. 22.

87

pressed by a new set of invasions.12 A unity of greater

permenance was not established until the eleventh century.

As Dawson views it:

The previous revivals of culture in the age of
Justinian and that of Charlemagne had been
partial and temporary, and they had been followed
by periods of decline, each of which seemed to
reduce Europe to a lower stage of barbarism and
confusion than it had known before. But with

the eleventh century a movement of progress
begins which was to continue almost without
intermission down to modern times.

For Dawson the great watershed of European history is the
beginning of the Middle Ages when Christendom "first became

conscious of itself as a society of peoples with common

14 Dawson represents

moral values'and common spiritual aims."
Western Culture before this watershed as "pre-Christian unity"
and after it as "post-Christian unity". He hopes his use of
these terms will clearly indicate he considers the Christian
Middle Ages as a great deal more than an interruption of a
normally classical-secular culture. For him the history

of civilization is centered in that thousand years in which
Christianity was the dominant cultural force. Events prior

to then were those of preparation and those which follow
deterioration.

Western civilization was born with the Greeks, and

to it they gave many of its intellectual and social traditions.

 

1E‘Dawson, Making of Europe, pp. 83-99 and 187-202.

13Dawson, Makipg of_Europe. p. 239.

14Dawson, Understanding Europe, p. 33.

88

As the Romans built their empire under a common law and uni-
form military system they absorbed the Greek idea of man and
the Graeco-Roman conception of a humanist culture that is
still recognizable in Europe today. After the third century
the life and vitality till then conspicuous in the Graeco-
Roman world were drained by a series of crises.15 Soon the
Empire died, but not before it performed an important service
for the history of Western civilization. It provided the
sociological and juridical basis for the organization of a
new religious society, which resembled the Roman structure

in its ecclesiastical hierarchy and its canon law. Surviving
the collapse of the Empire, the Western Church became heir

to the Graeco-Roman tradition of culture, although by this
time it had undergone much transformation. The invasions

by the barbarians were in most respects destructive, and
greatly reduced the already declining level of culture.

But inasmuch as they destroyed the ”complicated machinery

of the imperial bureaucracy" and thereby put an end to

those Roman institutions which tended to crush human initi-

ative, the invasions were positive.16

With the invasions of the fifth century a new stage
in the development of the West was initiated. In the
succeeding centuries the barbarians were converted, and

through the Church the traditions of the former Mediterranean

 

15Dawson, Making of Europe, p. 83.
16Dawson, Making of Europe, p. 87.

89

culture were transmitted to the new converts. However
unsteady the establishment of a new Christian society at
first sight appears, the foundations were nonetheless
firmly laid. By cooperation between Church and barbarian
kings, and by the missionary activity of the Irish and
Anglo-Saxon monks, Christian culture and education was
extended to lands where no external evidence of civili-
zation had hitherto existed. Central to Christian growth
was the Frankish kingdom. Outside this rather limited
area either the Roman influence was insufficient, as in
England or Eastern Europe, or too great, as in Byzantium

or Italy, to permit all the requisite elements to meet on
equal terms and thereby become fused into the desirable
unity.17
Dawson provides a curious admixture of Lot and Pirenne
that will again appear in the works to be considered later.
He notes, as did Lot, that neither the barbarian nor the
Christian stabbed the Romans in the back. He wishes, as
did Pirenne, to prove the idea of Empire was never 'de-
stroyed'. True, many of its ancient characteristics
disappear, but as an idea, a moving cultural force, it
lived on as the co-equal to the Church or barbarian "nation"
throughout the Middle Ages, and from time to time emerged A

to dominant once again the governance of peoples.‘ A

similar thesis will be adopted by J. M. Wallace-Hadrill.

 

17Dawson, Making of EuroEe, pp. 93—94.

9O

Wallace-Hadrill views the events after the third centu-
ry as transitional. During the transition the barbarians
that invaded the Empire gradually acquired what they con-

sidered to be a place in the Roman sun. This is true of
Clovis in the sixth century and of Charlemagne in the
eighth and early ninth centuries. Wallace-Hadrill observes

at the closing of his Theggarbarian West that:n
Historical interests and imaginative background

do not radically change in Western EurOpe during
the period covered in this essay. That is why

it has unity. Hence, as at the beginning so at
the end the vivid contrast stands; early

medieva men could live like barbarianS° but

they could think that they were Romans.18
As D111 and Lot had observed in their studies, the barbarians
were not aware they were destroying classical civilization,
norwere the Romans always conscious of momentous changes
in their way of life. Wallace-Hadrill concludes the reason
for this general ignorancewas the barbarian conceived himself
to be an emigrant, and aspired to become a citizen of the
Empire.

During the third and fourth centuries Wallace-Hadrill
notes the Empire was still capable of absorbing the migrating
barbarians. During the fifth century this was no longer the
case, but the barbarians did not understand why and they

continued to call and think of themselves as Romans. Towards

 

18J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West (New York,
1962), p. 146. Mr. wallace-Hadrill first had this book
published in 1952. Since then he has written The Long-
Haired Kings (New York, 1962) in which he discusses in a
series of essays the impressions given by Frankish his-
torians of the society in which they lived.

91

the end of the fifth century the barbarians were forced to
assume actual rule of those lands in which they were living,
but this in no way diminished ”their resolve to behave like

"19 Throughout the sixth, seventh and eighth

Romans.
centuries the barbarian kings continued to recognize the
emperor in Constantinople, although that emperor was not
accorded any real control within their kingdoms.

Another evidence of the desire of the barbarian to

become Roman can be found in the literature they wrote.

Cassiodorus and Boethius strove to put into Latin the
classics with which they were familiar. Historians of the

barbarian kingdoms wrote "in a Roman mirror."20 When

Charlemagne 'revived' the empire in the West, intellectuals
sought to connect his creation with the "Christian imperium"
described by Augustine as the unfulfilled objective of the
later RomannEmperors?1

In other respects the barbarians demonstrated they
thought themselves to be pursuing the Roman tradition. The
first barbarian codes were attempts to imitate the available
Roman models. Clovis paraded his Roman title of 'consul',
and continued to use the monetary and fiscal systems of
his Roman predecessors. The great respect accorded to the

bishop in Rome was an outgrowth of the magic of the Roman

 

19W'allace-Hadrill, p. 25.
20Wallace-Hadrill, p. 44.
21Wallace-Hadrill, pp. 74-97.

92

name. To the barbarians the Church symbolized "Romanitas".

.Thus when Charles was anointed emperor he surrendered his
state to the superior and universal ”Imperium Christianum".22
Wallace-Hadrill concludes the results of the barbarian
invasions to be a period of transition because the barbarians
were unaware of the impact their venture had upon the Empire.
Throughout several centuries the barbarians believed they

were maintaining the traditions of the Romans, although this
was not in fact the case. Actually the barbarians disrupted

the unity of the Empire, and within centuries caused complete
fragmentation. Only the pacifying, unifying and civilizing
efforts of the Church countered the process of atomization
the barbarians had begun. The result was the creation of
the "Imperium Christianum‘.23

Indication of the completeness of change in attitude
towards the early Middle Ages is given by M. L. W. Laistner
in a work appearing in the same year as Dawson's. Laistner
could with justification lament as late as 1931 that aside
from specialized treatments of topics or individuals, the
early Middle Ages was a subject generally and unfortunately
ignored in the English speaking world. To illustrate the
counterfeit nature of the “Dark” tag pinned upon his subject,

Laistner provides in Thought and Letters in Western Europe;

 

22Wa11ace-Hadrill, pp. 121-136.
23wallaee-Hadrill, pp. 91-105.

93

A‘_2. 500-900,24 a survey of the literature written during
the early Middle Ages. To a certain extent Laistner is
successor to Ker and Taylor as the apostle of medieval
intellectual history. But with that their likeness ends.
Laistner has without question a greater depth to his
knowledge of the early Middle Ages than any of his prede-
cessors. And he brings to his study but one conviction:
the whole of this period is worthy of sound scholarship.

The focal point of Laistner's interest is the
Carolingian era. This is so for two reasons. Obviously
there is a greater abundance of materials to be studied
during this period. But more importantly the Carolingian
age represents the fruition of earlier endeavors to create
an ordered world out of the collapsed Roman legacy. The
developments in European thought after the fourth century
are treated by Laistner in the order in which they happened.
The fourth and fifth centuries in particular are charac-
terized by their transitory nature. But in truth, Laistner
presents the five centuries preceding the coronation of
Charles as transitional.

Most decidedly Laistner is cpposed to the cataclysmic
interpretation given to the decline and fall of the Empire
by Gibbon. He maintains the decline had been a gradual
process, requiring at least the two hundred years between

300 and 500. The decline required several restorations,

 

24Mr. Laistner's shorter works have been collected

together under the title, Intellectual Herita e of the
Early Middle gges (Ithaca, I957).

94

but as evidenced by that of the fourth century, each time

a different Empire was restored. Furthermore, the myth
that the Roman was either supplanted by the barbarian or
was isolated by barbarian settlement has no truth. What
in fact happened was a vast transference of culture from
German to Roman and vice-versa. Unlike Lot, Laistner notes

that pagan education and pagan letters continued to have a

productive influence after the fifth century, but that they

declined from lack of a popular following.25

Reflecting the influence of Rand in his treatment of
the fourth and fifth centuries, Laistner notes the changes
in education. The educational program was fixed early in
the fourth century and was at that time inflexibly pagan.
There were no Christian schools, so Christians were forced
to receive their education, beginning with the program of
the ”artes", in the pagan schools. This was changed with
the introduction of monasticism and monastic schools. The
Christian population then had educational facilities which
were also purely Christian. Meanwhile, Augustine and
Jerome were reducing the high pagan content of educational
literature. But as they did so, theyreduced educational
requirements generally, forcing a precipitous decline in
learning. The last to suffer from this decline was Christian

literature, which until the seventh century remained creative,

 

25Max L. W. Laistner,|2hought and Lettersigp Westegn
Europe: A. D. 500-900 (Ithaca, New York, 1931), pp, 23-25,

95

with fairly numerous authors producing dogmatic, exegetical,
homiletic and apologetic tomes.26
As had been the case with Band before him, Laistner
is most knowledgeable about the sixth century. Of the
writers in that century he writes:
If a man's eminence is to be estimated by the

influence which his work or thoughts have
exercised on succeeding generations, then as-

suredly Italy in the sixth century produced

four men, eacp of whom deserves a niche in any

hall of Fame. 7
These men were, of course, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Benedict
and Gregory. Cassiodorus provided that monasteries would
in the seventh and eighth centuries become the repositories
of culture and education, while the Benedictine rule
gradually was adopted universally in the West. Between

Boethius, who benefited from the last remnants of antique

learning, and Gregory there was a serious decline in the
cultural level of Italy which not only lowered moral
standards, but at the same time promoted popular superstition.
It is to this change in culture that Laistner, like McGiffert,
attributes the nature of Gregory's writings. Gregory, in
contrast with Augustine or Boethius, reflects rather than
directs the will of the popular mind, for he, unlike them,

28

received an education barely removed from the vulgar.

With remarkable novelty Laistner continues his tran-

sitional theme beyond the sixth century.

 

v.7

26Laistner, pp. 34-53.
27Laistner, p. 85.

28Laistner, pp. 85-112.

96

While during the seventh century the continent
of Western EurOpe was withered by a blight of

intellectual sterility, a fresh and vigorous

giggzhnoggculture was maturing in Ireland and
This geographical shift in the center of cultural activity
from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, was beyond the
scope and perhaps imagination of earlier historians. At
least none had been so daring as Laistner, as to point it
out. Duckett, Schnurer and to a lesser extent Dawson, all
writing within a few years of Laistner, do make note of
Irish culture, however. The sources for Irish scholarship
were imported from the continent in the fifth and sixth
centuries. During the fifth century Catholicism was
introduced through the person of Patrick. In the sixth
century the monasteries he founded gleaned Frankish schools
for secular and theological writings.

Without a doubt the Irish enthusiasm for learning was
the most important feature of its monastic establishment,
but the world would not have known of it had not the Irish
monks exhibited another characteristic, a zeal for missionary
work. This sent them into England late in the sixth century
and soon to the continent itself. Columban (c. 560-615)
led a small number of Irish monks from Scotland to Brittany
and Burgundy, and after founding the famous abbeys at

Luxeuil and at Fontaines he made his way to northern Italy

and eventually to Switzerland establishing the monasteries

 

29Laistner, p. 136.

97

at Bobbio and St. Gall. Laistner does not wish to maintain
the Irish or English monks were exceptionally creative in
the literature they most certainly did produce, but Adamnan
was unexcelled in medieval hagiography. Aldhelm was the
foremost poet of his day, and Bede, whom we have met before,
has been widely recognized for the quality of his scholarship
and literary skill.30 '

On the continent there existed aside from Isidore of
Spain no exceptional examples of learned men, a fact often
overemphasized by historians prior to Laistner. This
remarkable absence of luminaries reflects the haggard state
of education on the continent, but does not mean there was,
as many claimed, a total want of it. Christianity was not
at this time the antithesis of learning._ It was, on the
contrary, the very repository of what erudition that remained.
It was the major task of the Church in the seventh and eighth
centuries to spread Christianity among the still pagan
barbarians; thus education was often given secondary emphasis.
The numbers of missionaries involved in spreading Christianity
are left unrecorded, but there are a few who were so promi-
nent they are worth mentioning. Wilfrith and Willibrord
were English monks occupied with the conversion of Frisia.

Easily most conspicuous was the Anglo-Saxon monk
Wynfrith renamed by Gregory II, the Pape in 719, as Boniface.
Boniface spent the thirty-five years following 719,

 

30Laistner, pp. 136-66.

98

strengthening the Church, first in the vast pagan lands
east of the Rhine, and then, in his last fourteen years,
by re-organizing the Church of the Franks, particularly
under Carloman and Pippin. His death coincided with the
advent of the ”epoch-making events“ associated with the

reign of Charles.31

Once Laistner reaches the Carolingians he passes
beyond the introductory nature of his survey of earlier
centuries to provide his endeavor with greater substance.
Laistner is convinced of the renascent qualities of the
Carolingian age. He believes them to represent the early
fruition of the union between Church and state. But he
does not, as othersseem to have suggested, argue this
union was without long and arduous preparation. Pirenne
to the contrary, the Carolingians were extending the
lessons of preceding centuries.

No one before Laistner applies the thesis of tran-
sition to the early medieval period more consistently
than he. H. St. L. B. Moss, who authored The Birth of
phg Mjgglg Aggg :25-814 in 1935 only four years after
Laistner's book had been first published, likewise thinks
the four centuries after the death of Justinian to be
transitional.

Governing the overview of Moss is the conclusion

that the key crisis in the decline of the Empire occurred

 

31Laistner, pp. 167-89.

99

in 395 with the death of Theodosius and the final division
of the Empire, and the observation that the theory of
evolution provides for a more reasonable explanation of

events than the catastrophic explanation of the nineteenth

century.

Organic processes cannot becleanly bisected with
a stroke of the pen, and it is hardly to be

expected that al forms of human activity should
develop ’pari passu'.32 .
The significance of the division of the Empire after
Theodosius lies not in its introduction of something radical
or new, but in that it depicts the finality of this division

and hence the beginning of a fact central to the following

centuries: the impossibility of reuniting the Empire. As

the fifth century begins the Mediterranean world was already

undergoing a transition that by the seventh century found

it divided into its Western, Byzantine and Moslem fragments.
During this transitional period Europe is neither

ancient or medieval. In the fifth century men constructed

and gave faith to an orderly universe and a scheme of
salvation resembling that of the medieval world.33 But
Moss admits to the frustration of adequately depicting the

cultural changes,

'It is useless to outline in mechanical ab-
stractions the tendencies of the transitional
age in art, literature, religion, philosoPhy,
and science. The interaction of Christianity

 

32H. St. L. B. Moss, The Birth of the Early Middle
Ages 225-814 (London, 1963), p. 111.

33Moss, p. 14.

100

and Paganism, the confluence of Roman, Greek,

and Oriental streams of culture, can be depicted,
if at all, only by copious and detailed illus-
tration. Yet from the writers of the fourth

and fifth centuries certain characteristics of
the educated classes may be drawn; an elegant
pedantry, a vague liberalism, a watery humanity,
a fluid pantheism, and above all, a vast super-
stition, creeping up irom the lower classes as
rationalism decayed.3

What is ancient, what is medieval within this mixture is
not only obscure, but a moot point to Moss. All that is
possible to distinguish is a beginning of this transitional

period in the late fourth century and its closing in the
early eighth with the death of Charlemagne in the west.
Moss offers an illustration of the ancient-medieval
mixture of the transitional early Middle Ages by tracing
the origins of feudalism to sixth century Italy. He thinks
it unrealistic to claim Italy to be feudal at that early
date, but he does suggest that "continual war conditions
transformed the civil machinery of ancient Rome into
medieval feudal dispositions."35 As the central power of
the Roman or Byzantine state wanes it is replaced in Italy
and also in France by a feudal system.36 Alongside the
rising feudatories is the expansion of papal power under
Gregory, and of Christianity under the monkish missionary.
Thus in the seventh century Moss observes that, "out of

the chaos of invasion, the medieval world of EurOpe is

 

, 34Moss, p. 32.

35Moss, p. 128.
36Moss, pp. 130-31.

101

beginning to take form and substance."37 It only remained
for the Papacy and the Frank to unite in the form of the
Empire to make manifest the Middle Ages.

In a series of incisive arguments Moss rejects as
erroneous the thesis of several of those authors previously
discussed. This is not incidental to Moss, for he is one
of a new generation of historians who wish to make serious
revision of the generation of Pirenne and Lot. With respect
to the long standing contention of Fustel de Coulanges and
Pirenne that the invasions did not seriously affect Gallo-
Roman continuity, Moss makes the distinction, drawn earlier
by Dill, that the Gallo-Roman tradition was superficial, and
gradually discarded by the Franks in practice. He likewise
rejects Pirenne's thesis that the commercial traffic on the
Mediterranean remained intact and significant after the
invasions and until closed by the rise of Islamic seapower.
He shows no favor towards nineteenth century association of
the Teuton with freedom and democracy, nor with Schnfirer's
argument that Christianity introduced any essentially
democratic principles. The barbarian kings strove un-
consciously towards a feudal constitution, and the Church
was inclined towards a theocracy. Both were willing to

join in administrating the new kingdoms.38

Moss chose the permanent division of the Empire after

395 as an exemplary event, for throughdut the transitional

 

37Moss, p. 142.
38Moss, pp. 143, 203-05, 245 and 250-51.

102

period which follows,existing institutions always resemble
some part of the Empire when it had been whole. Economically,
the system of Mediterranean-wide trade is replaced by local
self-sufficiency. Politically, the Empire becomes a group
of 'Germano-Roman' states. Educationally, the pagan schools
with their emphasis on rhetorical training for wide flung
pagan intelligentsia disappeared after the invasions. The
pagan schools were supplemented by monastic schools which
were a part of closed society and offered no opportunity

for secular learning. Artistically, the massive imperial
style of the Later Empire gave way to local and non-Roman
traditions. In peaceful co-existence there flourished
flexible Celtic patterns, huge Teutonic jewelry, fanciful
Scandinavian wood and metal crafts and Christian art. As
cultural standards weakened in the fourth and fifth centuries
experiments in literary models gave rise to greater "self-
expression in the broad emotional effects of strongly
expressed rhythms.”39 Since the first century the impact
of oriental patterns of worship had been strong, and this
‘was no less true until the late sixth century. But the
lfest was from the beginning more legalistic and concrete.

It gave greater emphasis to the personality and the grace
gained for man by Christ's life than the East did. Thus
as the two grew apart politically religious ties were
likewise gradually loosened.4O

 

39Moss, p. 254.

40Moss, pp. 242-60.

103

Learning after the sixth century had but one purpose
and that was to enable ecclesiastics to perform their duties.
These duties demanded a considerable knowledge, and learning
was further fostered by the secure and peaceful conditions
of the monastic life. The ”extraordinary achievement“ 0f
scholarly monks were unique in early medieval society as
the lay would no longer attend ' schools and were for the
most part hostile to learning. But the monks were not
alone able to halt the great decline in learning which had
occurred since the third century. In the third century the
full resources of classical civilization were still availa-
ble; in following centuries they were increasingly more
limited, and the Church helped to reduce and dilute the
supply. Creative thought ceased early in the fifth century
as tastes turned to grammars, anthologies, epitomes and
works of reference. There was a "definite break-down” of
culture in France and in Italy by the close of the sixth
century.41

Although the Church had been victorious over the
pagan religions of the Empire long before Theodosius died,
and successfully supplanted the schismatic Ariana in the
sixth century, EurOpe remained imperfectly Christianized
well into medieval times. The difficulty in suppressing

the strong undercurrent of paganism is attested to in

Carolingian and related documents. And learning, which

 

thoss. pp. 250-266.

104

would prove to be the only effective antidote, was only
imperfectly achieved.

To the lasting credit of Moss he dispels the virtuous
image assigned to the early Middle Ages by well meaning

but prejudiced historians. Unfortunately Moss demonstrates

an unwillingness to consider the vast Christian literature
of the post-classical period as a means by which medieval
culture can be discovered. He believes literature must be
measured against the achievements of the Greeks. By making
a rather narrow definition of what constitutes superior
thought and culture, he falls into the same mistake made
by Lot and Gibbon. All three men fail to appreciate a
literature or a culture designed to advance a civilization
which is not classical in orientation. Since the nature
of early medieval culture is Patristic and unmistakably
Christian, Moss is unable to conceive what is the central
feature of the society whose history he wishes to survey.
He is consistent with his contemporaries in that he
understands the period to be transitional, but he is unable
to evaluate the nature of the changes, or to give to them
any positive character. Moss is by no means alone in
defining transition to mean change without advancement.
This is also the position adopted by the next historian
to be discussed.

In recent years attempts to provide textbooks for

the precocious youths of today have often led to curious

productions in which the scholar disguises his knowledge

1C5

among chapters of necessarily borrowed ideas imperfectly
fitted into a whole. Such problems limit the usefulness
of The Mind of the Middle Ages A, D. 200-1500,, gn.Hist9r;£al
Survgy by Frederick B. Artz. His is an informative object
lesson in the merits and limitations of 'synOptic' writing.
While on the one hand he hOpes to provide an overview of a
period and a subject discussed only in scattered monographs,
on the other he recalls the uninformed superficiality so
often cultivated by ? generations seemingly in too great of
a hurry to get anywhere. There is nonetheless, something
to be learned from the synoptic and obviously eclectic
character of The Mind of the Middle Age .

Artz has gleaned from a rather wide assortment of
creative historians the substance of his attitude towards
his topic; a reconstruction of the sources and individuals
that together represent to us the thought of medieval
culture. There are strong overtones of Taylor, Lot and
Moss, and occasional suggestions of Sandys, Rand, McGiffert
and Laistner.within his text. Each was chosen for the non-
controversial nature of tfits ideas. They are'Safe”
historians of the transitional school.

Like Lot, Artz recognizes the foundations of the Middle
Ages to date in certain fields from the third century forward.
Artz comments for example, of art in the third and fourth

- centuries as the period in which,

106

The classical style of Greece and Rome was being

transformed into the transcendental style of the
Middle Ages. Art, like much of the rest of classi-

cal civilifigtion, became medieval before it became
Christian.

The crucial transformation lasted the whole of the Patristic
age, which ended with Augustine's death in 430. As Pickman
had argued Augustine was followed by the barbarian invasions
and the subsequent breakdown of Roman government, communi-
cation and commerce. ”Western Europe sank slowly into a
backward argicultural localism and into a twilight of
culture.”43 It took four centuries for the decline to

resolve itself meanwhile reaching its lowest level.

Eventually some signs of cultural revival appear in the

tenth and eleventh century.

The lack of educational facilities and of intel-
lectual communication, except as they were

maintained in some monastic centers, brought on
a tremendous drop in the intellectual level.

Culturally Latin Christendom, like a ruined
family that could no longer maintain its old

dwelling came to live in a few rooms of the

cellar. A

Latin Christendom, a term Artz inherits from Pickman,is used
here to describe the culture of the early Middle Ages as a

blend of classical and Christian.45

 

42Frederick B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle es
5, 2, 200-1500 (New York, 1953), p. 89.
A
3.51132, p. .94.

44Artz, p. 180.
45 *
Artz, Ppe 179-830

107

Remnants of the corpus of classical literature, trun-
cated by the Church fathers barely survived in any form the
barbarization of the West. Where there was learning, the
textbooks substituted for the classics were Christian or
were by "second-rate geographers and encyclopedists." Contri-
butions were made by Benedict, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore,
Gregory and Bede, but they were the contributions of “trans-
mitters" or of Christian thinkers. Benedict is cited for the
organization he lent the monastic movement and Gregory the
organization he lent to the papacy and the Church. As "founders
of the medieval mind" Artz gives them credit in the manner of
Hand.46 I

The summaries of art, music, poetry and history that are
offered by Artz, are chapters from the learned presentations
of Laistner and Moss. His emphasis in all cases is on the
Christian content of early medieval themes, and the maturation
of early medieval technique. This technique starts to grow
with the efforts of the Church fathers, and if the growth is
not rapid in the following centuries it is steady.47

As Artz and his predecessors Laistner, Moss and Wallace-
Hadrill demonstrate, it is possible to maintain the early
Middle Ages delimit that historical period marked by
the transition from the ancient world to the Middle Ages.

By employing the theory of transition in this manner they

 

46Artz, pp. 183-199.

47Artz, pp. 201-224.

108

imply transition means change not involving progress or
decline. The authors discussed in the previous pages
actively avoid judgment of the cultural level of the early
Middle Ages because they think such judgments are meaning-
less when applied to historical epochs not having a distinct
culture to measure. The absence of a distinct culture is
another way in which the foregoing historians define what
they mean by transition. ‘

Pirenne had observed that the sixth and seventh
centuries should be viewed as an extension of the fourth
and fifth, but this meant he thought all four centuries
had a distinct culture, that of the later Empire, and thus
he did not consider them to be transitional. Laistner,
Moss and Artz also group these four centuries together,
but not because they thought they represent the later

Empire, rather because they do not represent any culture

so singular as that of the later Empire.

CHAPTER V

THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
AS A UNIQUE CULTURAL ENTERPRISE

Lot had introduced a new era in the historiography of
our subject. His departure was prompted by the advanced
philosopies of history of Dilthey and Croce, men who pio-
neered a modern rationale for historical and cultural studies.
When Wilhelm Dilthey died in 1911, his first major work was
nearly thirty years old, but his theory of history was only
beginning to take hold in the decade of his death. His
genius would have been neglected, but for the similarity
of his conclusions with those of Benedetto Croce, the great

Italian philosopher of this century. The works of both men

tended to fme history from its subservient relationship
with metaphysics and science. They contended that the
student of history and the data he studies are alike in
that they belong to the same historical moment. Unless
the historian can get “inside“ his data he cannot compre-
hend the material as anything more than chronicle. Hence
they tend to think that the historian's role is to re-live
the past, and that the process of this experience and the
creative act which eXpresses the experience are both art
and science. It follows that they thought the historian's
orientation, interest and values would vary with his
historical situation, suggesting his judgments would be

relative.

110

Within the philosophies of Dilthey and Croce exist
the essentials of contemporary approaches to the early
Middle Ages. Recent historians are uniformly revisionist
in spirit, reacting to every kind of dogmatism. They do
not hesitate, however, to express their judgments of the
past. Since 1940 they have taken on yet another idea,
again stimulated by Croce, that of ethico-political history.
The guiding thought behind this form of historical writing
is that man's spirit is forever progressing towards self-
realization. Against the seemingly endless natural and
human obstacles, man is struggling to organize a free
society. Thus Croce believed history to be the process
in which man seeks liberty, but so far he has been
frustrated in his endeavors. Writing history is for
Croce writing a narrative of this historical process or
"the story of liberty”. C. Delisle Burns, who is to be
discussed in this chapter, conceives the historical
process to be the generation of morality through some
moral authority. Charles Norris Cochrane thinks that men
have been constantly searching for their personality,
William Carrol Bark for freedom and Jean Leclercq for
God, as the discussion which follows will point out.

Croce had placed upon the historian the task of
leaving his ivory tower for a life in the world. Intel-
lectuals, he said, die within the narrow confines of their

studies. To grow they must become involved. To write

history they must become fully engaged in the affairs of

111

the world in which they live. The ideas of Croce did not
fall on deaf ears. A good many historians in recent decades
have been men of affairs, concerned with events outside the
classroom. Burns was an official in the British government
during and after the first world war and authored numerous
tracts related to the advancement of internationalism.
Arnold Toynbee was an early opponent of Hitler, and during
the last war was conspicuous in his pamphcletering for the
English government. Since the war he has directed his
numerous magazine articles both here and in Europe towards
the encouragement of peace and redefinition of the status
of Europe. Oscar Halecki has taught in Poland, France,
Canada, Switzerland and the United States and has been
active in seeking peace and international c00peration.
-Christopher Dawson has had similar active roles and the
list could be extended outside this group to include a
large number of scholars in many fields. This activity

has undoubtably influenced the tone of contemporary history.
To what extent is clearly visible in the following presen-
tations.

It had been unfashionable during the nineteenth century
to indulge in histories of international dimensions. The
intellectual revolution in the three decades before the
first World War altered this prejudice. Oswald Spengler
received a very popular response to his Decline of the West

which appeared in 1920; in the same year H. G. Wells

112

published the Outline of History which was of similar broad
proportions. It was about this time Arnold Toynbee conceived
his immense (l2 volumed, 7000 paged) ALStudy of Histgry.1
Although others have since completed serious studies of
civilizations, Spengler and Toynbee are unique in that they
undertake a comparative study of "all" civilizations. They
sought to discover the laws that determine social evolution.

Whether such can be done is a problem for phiIOSOphers, but

it would do us well to understand one or two of Toynbee's

working assumptions.
Toynbee believes that each of the twenty-one civili-
zations known to us today to be distinct from all others.

There are, however, certain features that are common to all
civilizations. Science and ethics are among those few
factors which transcend the boundaries of any one civili-

zation. Achievements in these common elements create
differences among civilizations and point to a progressive

growth of four stages ascending from primitive societies,

through the primary and secondary civilizations to the

higher religions in which history finds its ultimate goal.2

If religion is a chariot, it looks as if the
.wheels on which it mounts towards Heaven may
be the periodic downfalls of civilizations on
Earth. It looks as if the movement of civi-
lizations may be cylcic and recurrent, while

 

1Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (12 vols.; London
and New York, 1939-1961)

2Arnold Toynbee, A Stud of Histor , abridg. D. C.
Somervell (New York, 19565. I, pp. 12-43. .

113
the movement of religiog may be on a single and
continuous upward line.

The parochialism of the nineteenth century and the
absurd morphology of Spengler are both criticized and
supplemented by Toynbeefs teleological philosophy of history.
That it is both teleological and gives emphasis to the role
of religion suggests the obvious parallel with Augustine.
Nor does the parallel end here. As Cochrane notes in
another work, Augustine appreciates the importance of the
Roman Empire in the history of mankind. It provided an
easier means for Christianity to expands. Toynbee views
the Empire as the initial step towards world religions.

A clear and well understood example of Toynbee's concept

of civilization is available with the Graeco-Roman. There
is good reason for the hyphenated title. It indicates the
crux of his argument. Although the civilization is one it
can be neatly divided. The earlier Greek world was intel-
lectually and culturally creative. To every challenge it
responded successfully except one. It could not replace
the international anarchy of local, sovereign city-states
with some kind of international law and order. Its only
attempt prior to the establishment of the Empire was the
so-called ”Delian League" founded in 478 B. C. The failure
of that league led directly to the destruction of the Greek
civilization between the years from 451 to 51 B. c. After

 

3Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial and the World
and thg We§t (New York, 1959). pp. 205107,

114

H

these four centuries of failure there camawith Augustus a

partial and temporary rally." Patterned after the "Dalian
League” of the Greeks, the Empire came too late to save
the new Graeco-Roman union. The centuries of peace it
initiated were neither creative nor permanent. In fact
maintaining peace exhausted the waning vitality of the
civilization which had created an Empire for that purpose,

and led directly to its final collapse during the invasions

of the fifth century.4

Unlike Gibbon, Toynbee maintains that the Graeco-
Roman world began to decline in the fifth century before

Christ. Its; death was obviously not a murder sponsored
by the barbarian or the Christian, but one of suicide
committed as the decline began. Christianity was not

responsible for its death nor were the philoSOphies which
anticipated Christianity. Both arose,

because the civic life of that civilization had
already destroyed itself by turning itself into 5
an idol to which men paid an exorbitant worship.

To provide an alternative to the worship of social
idols a series of mdstery religions, among them Christianity
were created by the vital minority groups within the Empire.
In anticipation of the dayfimmrwould be able to reduce the

power of the governing minority they nourished their infant
religion.6

ItToynbee, Study of History, abridg., I, pp. 257-58,
260-62, and 296-97.

5Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, p. 200.
6

 

Toynbee, §tudy of History, abridg., I, pp. 476-79.

115

The collapse of the Empire in the fifth century finally
resolved :1 an inevitable series of developments initiated
by the breakdown of the Graeco-Roman world nearly a thousand
years earlier. Events during that thousand years centered
about the activities of three groups, who represented a
'schism in the body social'. Militarists, exploiters,
nobles, administrators and philosophers constituted a
"dominant minority” that established the universal state
of the Empire, maintained it against all challengers, and
thereby exhausted the resources of the state and dictated
their will to the majority. Within the ‘b0dy social‘ were
the disinherited, the economically or politically ruined
peepies who constituted an “internal minority”. The victims
of upheaval, they turned to a religion which they eventually
built into a church as universal as the Empire. Bordering
the Empire were numerous primitive neighbors influenced to
a varying degree by the culture of the higher civilization.
For a time they were absorbed by its charms. When, however,
the Empire broke down the charm ceased to be influential
and the barbarian became hostile. This occurred in the
Roman world in the century before the Caesars. As the
' Empire suppressed the barbarian threat, it expanded its
frontiers and in time established a stationary border far
afield. This expansion exhausted the Empire and helped

the barbarian to realize his strength.7

 

7Toynbee, Study of History, abridg., I, pp. 371-429.

116

Also frustrating the Empire was a "schism of the soul".
The behavior, values and way of thought typical of the
dynamic civilization were vastly altered, reflecting the
disintegration of its society. Whereas the dominant minority
were creative during the stages of growth, it became passive
and iimitative, and the 'internal proletariat' assumed"
creative and active roles. Abandon and self-control replaced

the creativity of the dominant minority, and truancy and

martyrdom replaced discipline among the proletariat. Those
who had wealth and held a stake in society felt a sense of
drift, and those with no stake a sense of sin. Both
embraced religion to restore the lost objectivity. Activity
for all shifted from the macrocosm to the microcosm. The
dominant minority directed its activities to the past,
with the object of sustaining it without change. ,Unhappy
with their status the proletariat attempted to find a
short cut to the 'civitas Dei', hence they became more
spiritual, withdrawing into the fortress of the soul,
abandoning the world. Christianity, the Church and monasti-
cism were the products of the "schism of the soul” and the
logical substance of the future. A

Toynbee also investigates the role of the barbarian
during the early Middle Ages. He observes that throughout
the long history of the Graeco-Roman world, barbarians
lived on the periphery of civilization. As long as the

Greece-Roman civilization was growing the barbarian had a

satisfactory relationship with it. Inasmuch as the Roman

117

Empire represents the 'disintegration' of classical civili-
zation, it represents the absence of growth and the
deterioration of the normally good relations with the
barbarian. Toynbee selects the erection of a permanent

military frontier as the point at which this departure was

made. Henceforth the barbarians were hostile to the Roman
world, and in place of the economic, political and cultural

exchanges with the Romans, they conducted only trade and

war.
After the third century the advantage in waging war

was with the barbarians, who had acquired from the Romans

the equipment and technique to defeat them. Once the
pressures behind the military frontiers grew great enough,
the frontiers were broken by the barbarians, and the
cataclysm begun. Suddenly the Graeco-Roman world was
destroyed by the barbarian, and with destruction came

”calamity for all concerned". For the barbarians elated

with the success of their military venture, there was a

brief interlude called by Toynbee the Heroic Age followed

by a longer Dark Age. For the Graeco-Roman world there

was extinction.9

During the Heroic Age the barbarian exhibited
qualities that Toynbee compares to those of youth. These

qualities were generally destructive of all remnants of

 

8Toynbee, Study of History, abridg.. II, pp. 120-130.

9Toynbee, §tudz pf Higtory, abridg., II, pp. 130-136.

118

civilization including those of his own barbaric tribal
life, except in the case of literature, which briefly
flourished as the barbarian praisaithemselves on their
success, and then it faltered. 'Resulting from the havoc
caused by the youthful acting barbarians, was a Dark Age
of some two hundred years duration. Beneath the apparent
chaos of the Dark Age were the creative elements out of
which a new civilization was constructed, the new civili-
zation first taking form during the Carolingian era.lo
Toynbee was principally concerned, some observers
think, with giving explanation for the causes of Rome's
decline and fall. This may have in fact been the case,
but for reasons these observers fail to bring out. Toynbee
thought there could be something to be learned by a.
comparative study of the genesis of civilizations, and
whatever these lessons could teach us, would be most
valuable in a world that bears a striking resemblance to
that of the later Empire. Although his study was not
nearly so massive, this was also the purpose of Charles

Norris Cochrane, who in 1940 authored ghristianitp and

'Qlaggigg1_gnl&3;§. Toynbee wrote of the contacts between
civilizations producing among other institutions, the

higher religions. Cochrane investigates the confrontation

of a higher religion with one of its parent civilizations.

 

10
Toynbee, Stud of Histor , abridg.. II, pp. 136-41.

119

Toynbee's analysis leads to the conclusion the Empire
was a transient develOpment of a collapsing civilization.
Its sources were decay. Out of the same decay arose
Christianity and it was this institution which was destined
to have the greater future. The passing of the Empire
represents the disintegration of the Graeco-Roman civili-
zation. The establishment of Christianity represents the
foundation of a new and greater civilization. Between 375,
when the Empire began its death throes and 675, an inter-
regnum existed symbolized by absence of any one consistent
controlling element in western Europe. Governance shifted
from the Romans to the barbarian, religion was for a long
time divided among the Arian and Catholic and the culture
of the Graeco-Romans was barbarized and otherwise transformed.

During the deep sleep of the interval (375-675)

which intervened between the break-up of the

Roman Empire and the gradual emergence of our

Western Society out the chaos, a rib was taken

from the side of the older society and was

fashioned into the bgikbone of a new creature

of the same species.

Thus does Toynbee present the story of religion. A story
he believes to be infused with the idea of progress and
which he always relates to the present. The moral to the
story is clear: religion is the product of historical
progress, and civilizations are but transient vehicles in
which the movement of history is most visible.

Cochrane's book was a departure in the study of the

Roman Empire affecting philosopher and historian alike.

 

11Toynbee, Studyof History, abridg.. I, p. 10.

120

As cpposed to earlier histories which had been political,
legal, economic or social in nature, Cochrane was interested
in evaluating the intellectual history of the Empire.
Cochrane brought to his analysis the academic weaponry of
an English classical historian. His philos0phy of history
was greatly influenced by his friend and fellow historian,
R. G. Collingwood. His only prejudice was his appreciation
of the Christian world view.

It is Cochrane's contention that the cosmology of the
Christian was not only distinct from those of classicism,
but was- fundamentally opposed. Of the two the second was
by far the superior. Hence the study of the decline of the
Roman Empire is the summary of the triumph of barbarism and
superstitibn,, but contrary to Gibbon, Cochrane thinks the
success of Christianity was a gain for the world as was the
demise of the Empire. For Cochrane, reflection upon the
creation of the Empire "resolves itself largely into a

criticism of that undertaking and of the ideas upon which

2
it rested."1

Cochrane expressed his thesis in a few words as "the
fall of Rome was the fall of antidea."13 Rome was a way
of life predicated on the complex of ideas which when
grouped together areknown as those of classicism. To

understand what is meant by the fall of Rome then it is

 

l2Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical
Culture (New York, 1957). P. vi.

13Cochrane, p. 355.

121

necessary to begin not with the third, fourth or fifth
centuries, but rather with the Republican crisis of the
Caesars. As Toynbee had demonstrated, the four centuries
‘before 31 B. C. were plagued with the problem of government
still visible in the destruction of the Republic by Julius
Caesar. It was the hope of Augustus to restore and con-
solidate the Republic, to give it a constitution adequate
to its needs and thereby to solve the problems of govern-
ment. The constitution of Augustus, which he believed
salvaged what was vital in the idea of the commonwealth,
transformed the state into a device expressing "imperium",

14

the rule of law. Augustus presumed he freed ithe law'

from manipulation by interest groups and made it the
expression of philOSOphic and scientific principle. As
thus envisaged, the restoration dedicated the imperial
city to the realization of the thought and aspirations of
antiquity hitherto frustrated by the impermenance of rival
15 '

systems of government.

As Cicero viewed the history of the ancient world a
"pattern of empire” enabled nations to establish dominion
over their neighbors who were weaker in 'concentration of
pippp'. But the same law of empire also destroyed these
dominions once established, for industry when satisfied

by wealth gave way to sloth and eventually to destruction.

 

14Cochrane, p. 25.

15Cochrane, pp. 1-26.

122

The Augustan Roman believed this true of other ancient
peoples, but because he thought his ideals were uniquely
high he could break the bonds of this law. As the Empire

”embodied purposes which transcended the mere accumulation

of wealth and power, so also it pointed to an eternity in
sharp contrast to the ephemeral character of other systems."16
Itspermanence was additionally assured because the Empire

was built from the ground up on ”the essential and inde-
“17

structible elements of the private personality. 'Romanitas

stood alone as a project of world community united by the
ties of reason. By transcending the 'natural bonds' of
empires, Rome claimed a universality and finality never
before achieved.18

Needless to say the claims of the Augustan order were
doomed to frustration, yet the ideas Augustus symbolized
were in the first and second centuries implemented for the
most part. This implementation was temporary, however, and
was followed in the third century by inevitable collapse.
Reconstruction in the fourth century under Constantine and
his successors culminated in the adoption of a radically
new principle which integrated 'Romanitas' with the

”likeness of a crucified Jew."19

‘1 Cochrane. P. 72.

O 17Cochrane, p. 72-
lacochrane. pp. 39-45, 59-61, and 149-51-

1gcochrane, pp. 115-40.

123

But the object of the Constantinian and
Theodosian houses was not so much restoration

as renovation; they aimed to bring in a new

world to redress the balance of the old. This
was to effect a complete reorientation of

imperial policy, the chief preoccupation of

which was thenceforth to be with problems
arising out of the novel relationship of

Church and State.20

The Empire restored in the fourth century barely
resembled the Empire founded by Augustus. What had origi-
nally been designed as a mere ”intrusion into the machinery
of government" had been transferred into the vulgar mili-
tary and bureaucratic absolutism of the last Antonines and

eventually into the ”theocratic dynasticism” of the
Christian emperors of the fourth century. The crisis of

the third century had forced the Antonines to rule by _
bureaucratic regulation, which had so dulled the sources

of action that 'Romanitas' could be restored only by

mutilating it almost beyond recognition.21 Eclipsed was

the classical idea of 'virtus' and excellence, ended was

the ”great spiritual adventure” of antiquity.22

Causes for the breakdown of the third century are

not simply economic, social or political. In the last

analysis they were, Cochrane states, the "moral and

intellectual failure. . . of the Graeco-Roman mind."23

 

2O
21

Cochrane, p. 152.
Cochrane, p. 151.
QQCochrane, pp. 143-53.

23Cochrane, p. 157.

124

The most tragic and radical defect in the Graeco—Roman mind
rested with its conception of "power". Power was conceived
of as dualistic by the classical mind. One factor rested
with the individual and involved character, the other was
vested in the Gods and with fate and fortune and involved
circumstance. The two factors could not be mixed in any
satisfactory way and yet left separate they could lead only
to confusion. The insistence of the classical mind upon
maintaining the dualism it thought existed in the nature

of power, directly contributed to its inability to ”under-
f".24

stand itsel Classicism had sought to secure for man

the good life and stave off the threats of ”superstition
and barbarism". A series of political experiments witness,

however, to the inability of the Ancients to achieve their

ends.

Constantine's turn to Christianity was both an
admission of past failures and the expression of the hope
that a new creation, that of a Christian commonwealth,
would reverse the tendency of_the centuries. As Tertullian
and his fellow Christians predicted, the possibility of a
Christian Caesar did not exist. Constantine, who was
(unable to forego his classical prejudices, promoted a

very imperfect union of the two ideologies.. The result
was further conflict, that throughout the fourth century

threatened to shake the Empire asunder.25

 

v...— '7‘— ’—

24Cochrane, p. 157.
25Cochrane, pp. 177-212.

125

Under Theodosius the conflict between Church and State
was finally resolved by instituting ”the forms and order of

«26

the Catholic state. By so doing Theodosius completely

shattered the foundations of 'Romanitas' and heralded the
beginnings of the medieval establishment. Theodosius
exceeded Constantine only in the extent he was willing to
elevate Christianity as a political instrument. Because he
insisted that the Church play a political role, his experi-
ment like all the others could not succeed. There were too
few elements in Christianity that could effectively reinforce
an established order. On the other hand the principles it
embodied were of such an ”explosive” nature they could
destroy the waning faith in classicism, leaving the Empire
the empty husk that the barbarian could with remarkable
ease devour.27

If what Cochrane asserts is true, Christianity was
afterall a party to the Empire's fabled fall. Should the
religion be condemned? Gibbon thought yes, but Cochrane
assuredly did not. His reply:

For the modern, however, these momentous
developments were the necessary preparation

for a new and radically different future; and,

in order that this future should materialize,
it was inevitable that Romanitas, despite her
pretengéon to eternity, sfiouId perish from the

earth.

 

26Cochrane, p. 356.

27Cochrane, pp. 335-56.

28Cochrane, p. 356.

126

The architect of the "new and radically different future"
was Augustine, who described in his City of God the social
goals of the medieval world, its Christian Commonwealth and
the Kingdom towards which all were to direct their ambitions.
To build the world after Augustine's model required
the combined efforts of many generations. To this con-
struction the Church contributed its civilizing influence

upon the barbarian to whom the Christian brought "a faith

less inadequate to human needs"29 than that of classicism.
Writing about the same time as Cochrane (1940-41) and
in the main offering a sequaltb his analysis, C. Delisle
Burns also owes an intellectual debt to Toynbee. he rst
Europe is as much a political treatise as it is history.
Burns never tires of drawing parallels between events of
"the formation of the first EurOpe" (400-800) and the events
of the twentieth century, which he thought could and would
create a third Europe at the end of the war then in progress.

These conclusions are also drawn by Toynbee in the later

volumes of his A Spudy of History and in essays such as

Qipilizatiop on grial, and by Halecki, who contends in

Th9 Millgppipg of Europe that the Europe of the twentieth
century is on the ”threshold" of the third millennium (to

begin in the year 2000). Of the three Burns is the only

one who is not forced by the logic of his argument to
delimit certain precise times for the beginning of the

 

2900chrane, p. 357.

127

First Europe. As it was for Cochrane, Burns thought
historical change to be gradual or "transitional". Neither
would care to date precisely the ”fall” of the Roman Empire.
Both, however, believed the events from 395-410 were more
crucial than those of the 470's.30

”The formation of the First Europe" is more precisely
a social transition, the key events of which are represented
by the transformation of a unity maintained by the military
into a unity suggested by a Christian community. By the
alteration of the condition of most men from that of slavery
to that of serfdom, man gained both rights and responsi-
bilities. By the deterioration of a military dictatorship,
the foundations of democracy become discernable in the ‘
equality of men and before God in moral worth.:51

Burns is less concerned in The Eirst Europe with the
causes of Rome's "fall" than he is with the discussion of
an historical ”problem”. The problem he focuses upon ”is

the relation between armed force and moral authority in
the art of government and in social organization generally,

32 He believes

especially during a period of transition."
that the conclusions he draws from the formation of Europe
can be in some way applied to the formation of a third
EurOpe. Thus the "nomadism" of the fourth and fifth and

of the twentieth centuries may be taken to be similar

 

3OC. Delisle Burns, The First Europe (New York, 1948),
pp. 23-250

31
32

Burns, pp. 26-58.

Burns, p. 12.

128

social dislocation, and this dislocation may perhaps be
resolved in the twentieth in the same way it was solved in
the eighth and ninth by the assertion of moral authority.
That such a connection between the two ages has meaning
he substantiates by drawing two parallels. A major failure
of the later Empire was in the governance of the barbarians,
just as in our time Europeans have failed to justly govern
the Africans. Once the barbarians of the fifth century
gained political control they turned to the Romans for
models of government and social order. At the conclusion
of the first World War the League of Nations was a similar
archaic creation, thinks Burns. Both the barbaric nations
and the League of Nations failed since neither improved
upon institutions already demonstratively incapable of
solving the problems of government.33

As Cochrane had described, the "military dictatorship"
of the Empire collapsed of its own weight. Politically it
was replaced by a collection of nations maintained by
military force. The moral authority of the Empire was
vested in the sacred and eternal nature of the emperorship.
It was impossible for the barbarian kings to have this
moral authority transferred to them by the mere assumption
of the powers once held by the Empire. What happened was
the transferal of this moral authority to the sacred and

eternal nature of the Church, which like the Empire was

 

33Burns, pp. 35-58.

129

universally greater than any rival institution. In actuality
moral authority was transferred from an organization for law
and government to the bishops occupied with the welfare of
Christians and anxious for the salvation of souls. Once the
moral authority was transferred to the Church it was never
certain how legal and political institutions were to receive
the necessary sanction of the authority.34

Burns also draws a certain parallel between the

"Mediterranean" civilization of antiquity and the First EurOpe.
The latter was the creation of "the Latin Churchs"’ as opposed
to some one military or civil power. Thus "it was an original

"35

experiment in new ways of living and thinking. In ex-
ternals and in culture the Roman was more advanced, but in
certain respects medieval civilization was superior. Burns
sees this superiority "in its moral and religious ideals, in
its community of feeling between the rich and the poor and in

"36 Many medieval

its widespread sense of social responsibility.
men were superior to the ancients in thought and character, but
because the two civilizations are in most particulars distinct
in emphasis it is unreal to exalt one or the other. It is

true nonetheless that in the formation of the "First

Europe" a greater stake in the fortunes of community were

given to its poorer members and by so doing many of the

 

35Burns, p. 24.
36

Burns, p. 24.

130

injustices of the older society were resolved. Burns thinks
that from this we should learn that the new Europe, now in
the making must also find room for its poorer members.

Oscar Halecki, recently author of The Millennium of
‘Eppgpg, arrives at conclusions that closely resemble those
of Burns. The most visible comparison between the two men
lies, however, in the manner in which they divide up
European history.

Halecki would like to divide the two thousand years
of European history since Christ into three millenniums.
The first ended in the tenth century with the beginning of
the Holy Roman Empire under the Ottonians and the third
with the end of this century and the termination of the
predominance of the European over the world.37 Halecki's
use of the millennium as a measure of European history
deserves explanation. Halecki defines a millennium to
open with a significant event that initiates distinct
institutions whose evolution gives meaning to the thousand
years or so of their existence. To illustrate his use of
millennium Halecki provides a brief description of the
"first millennium". The significant event opening the
”first millennium" was the life of Christ, who inspired
the Christian Church, the institution whose growth

characterizes the whole of the following thousand years.38

 

37Oscar Halecki, The Millennium of Europe (South
Bend, Ind., 1963), pp. 77-80 and 356-69.

38Halecki. pp. xxi-xxv.

131

There were, in Halecki's mind, two ingredients basic
to the Church: Graeco-Roman humanism and Christianity. It
was upon these ”pillars" that the "New Rome" of the Popes
was built. Classical humanism is represented by the
Empire of Augustus. Its establishment, decline and fall
are important chapters in the history of an idea lasting
through the Empire of Charlemagne. Christianity quickly
found root in the Empire, eventually occupying the capital
city itself, identifying its leadership with the Romans.

It was the Roman church which bore out the transition
from the ”ancient” to the "medieval". Halecki is most
careful to establish the change as transitional.

Today it is almost universally admitted that

there was no break separating Antiquity and

the Middle Ages but rather a gradual, con-

tinuous evolution, a long and slow transition

from the Hellenic or rather Graeco-Roman to

the so-called western civilized society. . .39
He implies that it is misleading to label the successors to
the Empire as early medieval, medieval or dark. The
significant contrast between the old and the new is
geographical and religious, not temporal. The former was
pagan and Mediterranean, the latter Christian and EurOpean.40

Differences between the later Empire and the three
centuries of ”no Empire" should be deemphasized. Early

Christian culture was closely allied to that of the

ancients. Similar language, artistic environment, social

 

39Ha1ecki, p. 32.

40Halecki, pp. 36-37.

132

structure and problems of survival override the other often

superficial differences. Christian literature was an out-
growth of the Roman heritage, and once the pagan conceptions
in philosOphy and ethics were no longer a threat to the
Christian mind, Classical literature was widely appropri-
ated by the Christian. 0f the appropriators the greatest
were the monks, especially of the Benedictine order, who

during the periods of political confusion inspired con-

siderable intellectual labor. The church survived the

collapse of its protector the Empire, and succeeded in

spite of great material losses in "preserving, sublimating

and augmenting the cultural heritage of the Rome of Caesar."41
Already the similarities with the work of Dawson show

through in Halecki's survey of the first "millennium".

This similarity becomes even more evident when the Carolingian

revival is discussed. Both men emphasize the transient

character of the revival, and its basic affinity with the

Empire of the Romans. When it fails it frees Europe for a

complete shakedown succeeded by the order of the medieval

world established sometime in the eleventh century. Both

men follow rather closely the guidelines for European

development first established by Henri Pirenne, although

neither historian gives evidence of realizingthis simi-

larity. Both men, however, differ from Pirenne in one

very important aspect. Dawson and Halecki give considerable

emphasis to the Christian orientation of society, and

 

thalecki, p. 35.

Pirenne does not. It is the continuity of the Church
throughout the ”first millennium" which permits Dawson,“
Halecki to suggest it has uniformity, but Pirenne attempted ‘
to find in terms of economics and less directly political
and cultural events a certain extension of the ancient
world.

The weakness of Pirenne's analysis offers William
Carroll Bark, an American historian and author of the
Qrigins of the Medieval World, his point of departure.

Bark attempts in the rather unusual form of an extended
critique, to dispel his American readers of an accumulation
of "notions" heaped on early medieval studies by the twenty
some historians discussed above, but particularly by
Pirenne. For this reason he devotes a full quarter of

his book to a methodical, almost surgical examination and
dismissal of the Pirenne thesis. The one point he finds

to be valid is Pirenne's claim the barbarian did not
destroy the Empire. This does not imply, as it did for
Pirenne, however, that the barbarian should not be associ-
ated with change, but rather, that causes for Rome's
decline cannot be so easily explained.42

Difficulties in the classical order of things were
apparent early in the third century. The resulting crisis
destroyed the economic, social and intellectual foundations

of the ancient world. The leadership of Rome was forced

 

#7

42William Carroll Barki'ggigins offithe Medieval World
9

(Garden City, New York, 1958 pp. 9-40.

133

Pirenne does not. It is the continuity of the Church
throughout the ”first millennium" which permits Dawson and
Halecki to suggest it has uniformity, but Pirenne attempted
to find in terms of economics and less directly political
and cultural events a certain extension of the ancient
world.

The weakness of Pirenne's analysis offers William
Carroll Bark, an American historian and author of the
Qrigins of the Medieval World, his point of departure.

Bark attempts in the rather unusual form of an extended
critique, to dispel his American readers of an accumulation
of ”notions” heaped on early medieval studies by the twenty
some historians discussed above, but particularly by
Pirenne. For this reason he devotes a full quarter of

his book to a methodical, almost surgical examination and
dismissal of the Pirenne thesis. The one point he finds

to be valid is Pirenne's claim the barbarian did not
destroy the Empire. This does not imply, as it did for
Pirenne, however, that the barbarian should not be associ-
ated with change, but rather, that causes for Rome's
decline cannot be so easily explained.42

Difficulties in the classical order of things were
apparent early in the third century. The resulting crisis
destroyed the economic, social and intellectual foundations

of the ancient world. The leadership of Rome was forced

 

42William Carroll Barks Origins oggthe Medieval World
9

(Garden City, New York, 1958 pp. 9-40.7—

134

by the crisis to pursue a path destined to destroy the very
enterprise the Romans hOped to save. With the reign of
Constantine the ”major turning point in history was reached."43
The Empire was for a time restored, the rapid decline 1
following the crisis of the third century forestalled. But

at what cost! A name was ransomed for the price of the
western half of the Empire.

Was the sacrifice misfortunate? Bark answers yes, at
least for the Byzantium. "A thousand years of Byzantium
produced extinction; a thousand years of medieval effort
produced the Renaissance, the modern state, and ultimately
the free world."44 Drawing an unmistakable parallel to the
American frontier, Bark portrays Western Europeans using
original ideas and methods to forge a new civilization out
of the crumbling world that had been Rome. As the "dead
wood” was cut away experiments were started, aimed at a
more satisfying solution to the social problems than the
Graeco-Roman world was unable to provide.45

Cutting away the dead wood and the forging of a new
society occurred alongside one another over a period of
three centuries (300-600), During this time the world was
neither ancient or medieval, but both. Bark emphatically

rejects Pirenne's efforts to deny change, but he believes

it useless to attempt fixing some specific date such as

 

43Bark, p. 60.

44Bark, p. 93.
2+5Bark. pp. 83-93.

u

135

476 (Gibbon and Lot), 395 (Moss and Cochrane) or 430
(Pickman) for ending the Empire. There had been a profound

social and economic revolution, but it took centuries not

years to be realized.46

Accompanying the social change that destroyed the

Roman middle class and granted to the landed aristocracy a
great increase of power over the numerous small landholders,

and the associated economic transition to a natural economy,

was the transformation of Christianity into its distinctly
western character. Contrasted with that of Byzantium, the
Church of Rome gained power and prestige without the support
of the State, and its nature increasingly reflected the

poor, agrarian and "intensely empirical" society in which

it grew.47

The rearrangement of society into its pre-feudal
pattern may have been something of an historical accident;

at least it was not Planned. But it created what modern
sociologists call an "Open-society".

Perhaps it is not too much to say that medieval
society was functional in ways not even dreamed
of by antiquity and leading to ends beyond the
imagination of earlier times. By 'functional'
I mean that it was a working, striving society,
impelled to pioneer, forced to experiment, often
making mistakes but also drawing upon the energies
of its peOple much more fully than its prede-
cessors, and eventually allowing them m ch
fuller and freer scope for development.

Not the least of the products of this "functional" settlement

was the acceptance of change and the discovery that the new

 

46Bark, pp. 94-110.

47Bark, pp. 107-125.
48Bark, p. 98.

(3

136

conditions could be adapted to. "Our early medieval prede-
cessors began to win their way, and ours, to freedom because
conditions enabled them to learn from the past without being
enslaved by it."49

No one better represents the genius of medieval men
to appropriate from the past than Augustine. His Citp of
92g is deeply indebted to the classics for many of its
inspirations, but as much is derived solely from the needs
and values of the emerging Christian world. That Augustine
or many of his less highly praised heirs did not occupy
themselves with speculation about science and various meta-
physical problems does not reflect on their inability to do
so, but indicates the very great shift in intellectual
interest after the fourth century. Stigmas of decadence
and retrogression often placed upon the post-classical age
distort the realities of that historical situation.

"The essential consideration is that by the

fourth century a new intellectual attitude

toward the world had been well launched; that

this attitude was not necessarily either

superior or inferior to that of gagssical

antiquity, but simply different. V

With Bark the implications of the progressive nature
of the early Middle Ages were no longer disguised. They
were now clear and out into the open. What had been subtly

inferred by Taylor, Schnurer and Dawson, and indirectly

expressed by Toynbee, Burns, Cochrane and Halecki was

 

49Bark, p. 157.

50Bark, p. 105.

137

now neither subtle nor indirect. Bark writes without
apology or qualification:

The primary thesis of this chapter, therefore,
and indeed of this work as a whole, is that
something new, distinct, and essentially original
began in the Western EurOpean portion of the
Roman Empire; that its elements are dis-
tinguishable by the fourth centur , and some

of them earlier. This "something' is perhaps
best described as a new-attitude toward life.

51

Quite obviously the vision expressed by Bark is unlike that
of any expressed before the twentieth century, and with the
exception of the few just mentioned, not within the scope
of opinions expressed in this century either. In truth
Bark represents a position which only quite recently would
have been possible to maintain. Without the generations of
scholarship which preceded him Bark would be but a voice
in the wilderness, without substance and without meaning.
The work of Taylor, Schnfirer, Dawson, etc.. were essential

to Bark. And for this reason, others, including Leclercq,

Daly and Décarreaux yet to be included in this chapter,
have in recent years accepted and expanded upon the pro-
gressive thesis Bark so vividly asserts.

Scholarship removed, if only temporarily from the
schools, has in recent years proven to be both imaginative
and creative. This is attested to not only by those in
close contact with current politics or other worldly
affairs, but by those who avoid such contacts, but have

intensified in other ways their sympathy with the historical

*

SlBark, pp. 97-98.

\a

 

13.8

subjects of their choice. Jean Leclercq, a Benedictine
monk of more than casual persuasion, left the world for
the contemplative life when he was seventeen. His contact
with the Benedictine traditionsvms both the stimulus and
the subject of his The vae of Learning and the Desirefifg;
Egg. That his experience with monastic life is everywhere
evident within his study is quite possibly its major attri-
bute.52

To famfliarize his students with the monastic tradition
he himself is so familiar with, Leclercq returns to the
four centuries from 800 to 1200 in which monastic culture
was most fully in evidence. He distinguishes this culture

from the co-existing and much more emphasized scholastic
Middle Ages of the universities. Then with the touch of
a master he in turn investigates the formation, sources
and fruits of that culture.

About the two texts which together initiate the
Benedictine tradition, Gregory's "Life of St. Benedict"
and Benedict's Rule_for Monks, the monastic culture of
the Middle Ages was formed. Both texts emphasize the
acquisition of knowledge always evidenced by the Western
monk. The acquisition ofknowledge or at least learning
was demanded by the major occupation of monks, which was

prayer and meditation, the lectic digjna. Implied in this

 

52Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning_and the Desire
for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi Tfiew York, 19603.
Compare this paragraph with the discussion on p.1uof this
chapter.

:I

,x’i39 .

/

acquisition was the ability to possess, read and write books.

But studies were not undertaken for speculative purposes.

As Benedict demonstrated, once learning was acquired it

was to be turned to the contemplation of God, that is,

transcended if possible. A monk had but one end, and that

was to obtain eternal life. Thus the monastic community

was organized so as to detach him from immediate and

distracting concerns and to allow him to devote his time

to prayer and asceticism, ”authentic contemplative peace."53
Obtaining eternal life required constant search, aided

on the one hand by an intense longing or "desire” for God

and his love, and on the other, by the study of letters

that intensified this longing or "desire". Quite obviously

there was a great need for study, but study was no way a

part of the monk's vocation, it was and remained a means

useful to, but also subordinate to, the "search for God."54

In the formation of the monastic culture Benedict is
the inspiration behind monastic learning, andGregory sup-
plied the enthusiasm for the life of contemplation. Beyond
that, Gregory provided an "authentic theology" that in
later centuries became the substance of a ”monastic
theology". Gregory's theology in many respects resembles
that of Origen and Augustine as well, and for this reason
he”bridges the gap between the patristic age and the

monastic culture of the Middle Ages."55

 

53Leclercq, pp. 13-22.

54Leclercq, pp. 23—30.
55Leclercq, p. 31.

I‘

140

Gregory elaborated in addition to a theology, a

56

phenomenology of the states of prayer." These states

move from the fundamentallevel of humility to compunction
and eventually detachment or aceticism. Out of the earlier
states of prayer and contemplation a new understanding of
God and love is achieved that may lead to knowledge of God

and an even more active humility that brings with it a

certain peace.

Monastic culture drew upon several sources for the
materials used to spark meditation and desire for God.
Some of these sources were used to improve the abilities
of monks to speak and write well of God, and were es-
sentially grammatical in nature, while others described
the fruits of God's love and otherwise encouraged the
monk to transcend petty thoughts and consider the eternal
life. Whatever their function these sources were found
in "Holy Scripture, the Patristic Tradition, and Classical
Literature." Of these three, the first two are by far the
most important.58

All monks were very familiar with the contents of
the Scriptures, and in mast cases knew much of it "by
heart”. Their familiarity arose from conStant contact
with the Scriptures through prayer, reading and study.

The methods of learning, which placed an emphasis upon

 

56Leclercq, p. 33.

57Leclercq, pp. 37-44.
58Leclercq, pp. 65-187.

141

"active reading" and "reminiscence" made the contact with
the Scriptures much more personal than the more casual
reading habits of today. Also reinforcing a monks knowledge
of the Scriptures is the extensive use they made of
commentaries on them. The primary source for these
commentaries were the writings of the Patristic Age.
Although the Eastern fathers were far more numerous than
the Latins of the West, their influence upon the monastic
culture was no greater.59

As evidenced by the great import accorded Gregory and
Benedict, Augustine and Jerome the Latin fathers gave
monastic culture its special character. But, if this
culturew’as profoundly Latin and western, it had a close
intellectual and spiritual connection with the East of
Cassian, St. Basil, Evagrius, Origen and most particularly
St. Anthony.

Out of the Patristic Age grew the monastic Middle
Ages. Leclercq thinks the Patristic Age separated the
monastic from classical culture, however. Whereas the
affinity with the Church fathers was very real for most
monks, the value of pagan letters was usually only peda-
gogical. Classical Latin authors were read for the beauty
of their expression. Their ideas, when reflected upon,

were rarely understood and almost never thought to be

pagan. They were utilized and allegorized, and transcribed

 

59Leclercq, pp. 87-111.

 

 

142

with abandon, but the milieu in which they were written and
the assumptions upon which they were predicated were con-
ceived as Christian and hence never comprehended at all.60

Before Leclercq, numerous efforts had been made to
identify the Middle Ages with scholastic theology and
philosophy, and hence with scholastic culture. If such
an identity is legitimately made, it produces conclusions
such as those in evidence throughout the first forty years
of the twentieth century. Since scholasticism is largely
a phenomenon of the Middle Ages and does not appear among
theologians much before the ninth century, although some
have claimed, as Rand did, that Boethius was the first
of the scholastics, the task of assigning the early Middle
Ages any position of importance in intellectual thought is
considerably complicated.

Assuming scholasticism is the fruit of medieval
culture then the early Middle Ages are either a period of
transition or of preparation. If, however, Leclercq is
correct in arguing that there is an intermediary culture
preceding that of scholasticism, then it is possible to
speak of the creative aspects of the early Middle Ages.

In effect, a monastic culture was the product of early
medieval thought, and this culture is not only distinct

from those of the past, but is an advancement upon the

past, as maintained by Daly and Décarreaux.

 

6OLeclercq, pp. 139-87.

Pr

143

After the Second World War there was a considerable
revival in interest in monasticism, particularly inasmuch
as it appeared as a key to understanding the transition
from the patristic to the Carolingian ages. Laistner and
Gustav Schnurer introduced the possibilities of monasticism
in the late twenties and early thirties and Leclercq, in
the fifties viewed monastic culture as the first expression
of medieval culture. Two very recent studies in Benedictine
monasticism suggest the possible fruition of this interest.
Both Jean Décarreaux and Lowrie J. Daly wrote their his-
torical narratives of monasticism in the sixties, and both
are fully appreciative of the monks as the mainstays of
culture in the sixth through ninth centuries. Décarreaux
entitled his monograph, Monkg and Civilization from the
Barbarian Invasions to the Reign of Charlemagne, and Daly,
Benedictine Monasticism: Its Formation and DevelOpment
Thrpugh thefilggh Centugy.6l Although their styles differ,
Décarreaux closely resembles the straightforward narrative
used by Schnurer, and Daly the topical survey method of
Leclercq. The material they cover is very similar. They
are anxious to portray the monk as the nameless man who
through his quiet and unspectacular labors over generations
of time converted the masses of an uncivilized society into

the civilization of the Middle Ages.

 

61Lowrie J. Daly, Benedictine Monasticism: Its
Formation and Development Through the 12th Century (New
York, 19 5

144

The tremendous achievement of winning the
Teutonic and Slavic peoples to Christianity
and then to civilization was brought about-
by the continual self-sacrifice and heroic
labors of hgndreds of monks in all parts of
Europe. . . 2

The culture they brought to the pagan barbarian is
likewise explored by these men, and they reveal it to be
an amalgam of antique, peasant and Christian ideas with
a particular emphasis upon the Christian. This culture
is no longer in its elemental state after the sixth
century. It is the unity, labeled by Leclercq as monastic.
Neither historian has doubts that the monk was as early as
the sixth century a member of a new society in the history
of civilization. In the monk's way of thinking and way
of life he was no longer Roman. The monks had transcended
the Roman with a neutral culture, or rather individual
culture neither antique nor barbarian. Thus as monks,
they could smoothly, but slowly move along the path
towards religious unity while politically Europe remained
fragmented.

As they advocate the role of the monk in early
medieval Europe Décarreaux and Daly differ remarkably from
Montalembert of the mid-nineteenth century. They are not
so much defenders of the faith as they are scholars whose
interests happen to be the role of monasticism. As such

they complete the thrust initiated by Dawson in 1933.

 

62Jean Décarreaux, Monks and Civilization from the

arbarian Invasions to the Rei n of Charlema ne, trans.
gfiarIotte HaIdene (London, Igbéj, pp. I35-35.

145

It is no longer necessary to assume an apologetic stance.
The relationship between church and culture after Augustine
are widely and clearly understood. Gibbon no longer
dominates the public's prejudice, hence study of the early

medieval scholarship is normative rather than explicative.

Additionally Décarreaux and Daly represent the
complete abandonment of the explanation offered by Artz,
Moss, Laistner and Wallace-Hadrill for the early Middle
Ages. As Bark and Leclercq had declared, the early medieval
period should be understood as an advancement upon ancient
culture and distinct from it. If there was a transitional
period in the sense Moss and Laistner use the term, this
period encompassed the Patristic age, the three centuries
from 300-600, or that period often described as the later
Empire. After the sixth century a new culture set forth
by Leclercq as characteristically monastic is clearly
evident. Although this culture eventually blends in with
that of the Middle Ages, this fact does not deny its
singular existence from the seventh to the beginnings of

the eleventh century.

CHAPTER VI

CONCEPTIONS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

BY THE HISTORIANS OF ART

It seems evident from the material presented in the
preceding chapters that historians are very dependent upon
their predecessors for their inspiration. In many cases
the general themes of a history are prominent in other
works, and it becomes the purpose of that history to reject
or correct the errors which accompany these themes in the

other presentations. This does not imply that historical

writing is necessarily cyclical or linear although ample
examples can be found to support either idea. It does
indicate the dependency of the historian upon his environ-
ment, and hence gives substance to the philosophers who
would maintain scientific history such as that sought by
Ranke to be quite impossible. If the environment of the
historian is a factor in determining his approach to his-
torical writing and the‘nnmes to which he will give emphasis,
then it should also be true that other intellectual endeavors
will likewise be limited in this respect.

To discover if such is the case, the subjects of art
history and the history of philosophy will be explored in
the two following chapters. To maintain the continuity of
this paper, these subjects will be limited to those

materials which explore the art or philosoPhy of the early

147

Middle Ages. And in order to maintain temporal perspective,
the materials selected to measure each of these topics will
be related to the books and themes discussed in the previous
chapters.

Objects of classical and post-classical art have been
familiar to men since they were first produced, but it does
not follow they have always been appreciated as such. Art
history demands that the art objects be clearly recognizable
as belonging to one epoch as opposed to another. Classical
art is easily differentiated from the materials common to
the Middle Ages, but study of the arts of a period in
transition or of arts closely allied to either the classical
or the medieval periods awaited the creation of refined
methods to distinguish the dates in which specific works
were done. For this reason the history of post-classical
art is a relatively modern phenomenon. As had been the
case with political and social histories of the early Middle

Ages, students of art history in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were interested in classical subjects

to such a degree they were almost totally ignorant of the
deve10pments in art during the thousand years preceding
the Renaissance. Those who had opinions about the non-
classical art of this millennium were filled with an
enormous disgust characterized by the very name they
assigned to it, ”gothic".

During the Romantic reaction to classical art forms

in the nineteenth century, medieval art was not only

"1‘ 2‘

148

highly praised, but it was given a stature of eminence
excelled only by the art of the Romantics themselves.“
Romanticism in art outlasted the influence that movement
had in history by several decades. Thus a far more
substantial "school" of art history was developed in the
study of barbaric or Germanic art than was sustained among
historians more generally, although art historians do not
retain in art any more than in history the exaggerated
importance the Romantics assigned to the barbarian.

Interest in the Middle Ages, and more specifically
the early Middle Ages, demanded the invention of a mature
system of archeological exploration and of scientific means
by which findings might be classified. Thus the nineteenth
century gave impetus to the systematic exploitation of
burial and other archeological sites, the profits of which
are filling volumes of literature in the twentieth century.
So great has been the increase in post-classical art objects
that a large volume is now needed to discuss the subjects
exhausted within brief chapters only fifty or sixty years
ago.

In many important particulars Franz von Reber, a
German educated at Munich and author of History of Mediaeval
Ag} in 1886, follows the lead of Fustel de Coulanges in
emphasizing the continuity of art from late Roman to the
times of the Carolingians. Fustel de Coulanges had insisted

the Germanic invasions did not disrupt the organization of

 

149

Gaulish society. Reber agrees, and further asserts that
with the beginnings of early Christian art in the third
century the principle features of art are determined for
the whole of the medieval epoch. Early Christian art is
succeeded in turn by Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic
Christian art, which developed unaffected by the political
events which had import elsewhere. Christian art borrowed
heavily from the art forms prevalent in the Empire in which
it grew. The nature of the parent art was classical but
decadent, and once the Christians adopted them, the continu-
ation of certain classical forms was assured.1

Reber was convinced that Christian art was never
adulterated by the Celt or Teuton, but rather lends to each
of these cultures the benefits of its superior ideal.
Celtic art was inspired originally by borrowings from
Ravenna craftsmen, the same source that Charlemagne turned
to when building the churches for his Empire. The im-
portance of Christian art was assured by Charlemagne, for
he brought to the north the Christian architecture of the
south. When the Carolingian Empire began to dissdme the
medieval nations were founded and art presumed the local
character familiar in the "Romanic and Gothic epochs".
Reber exactly reversed the impression Taylor or Dawson
would give for this period. He presented unity disrupted
in the ninth century by the diversity of the Middle Ages,

1Franz von Reber, Histor of Mediaeval Art, trans.
J. T. Clarke (New York, 18875, pp. 1-118.

 

 

150

whereas Taylor and Dawson represent the early Middle Ages
to be diverse, but with the ninth or tenth century a unity
is attained. Reber's presentation is more consistent than
Taylor's or Dawson's with the nineteenth century preference
for organization on the basis of nations.2
In other places Reber accepts the race concept when
speaking of the Celt or Teuton. He gives priority to the
Christian over either of these, however, which is a re-
flection of his Catholicism, an attitude discernable in
another German, Schnurer, of alster date. The impli-
cations of Reber's book are fully evident in Mediaeval
453, by the Englishman,W. R. Lethaby. Of greater techni-
cal accomplishment, Lethaby represents the advancement
made in art histories in the eighteen years after Reber's
book was published. Lethaby, for example, distinguishes
between two schools of Christian art after the fourth
century. In the West, and dependent upon the Roman prefer-
ence for representational art, Christian artists continued
to use sculpture and has-reliefs in the "Romanesque"
fashion. After Constantine, the East was introduced to
a Christian art unable to resist the oriental culture.
Thus a "Hellenesque" art concentrated in Byzantium arose.3
Except for isolated cities in Italy all creative
advances in art during the early Middle Ages were inspired

 

‘/3W. R. Lethaby, Mediaeval Art; From the Peacemgf
the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance 312-1350 YLondon,
90 9 PP. 9- 30

.r q

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151

by the "Hellenesque" or Byzantine art. Lethaby, like Reber,
could find no need to devote many pages to Celtic or Germanic
art. To them neither art contributed to their subject, which
was in truth a history of Christian art not medieval art as
they claimed. Both Lethaby and Reber use architecture as

the art form by which "Mediaeval Art" can best be traced.
Thus they are speaking in terms of architecture when they
conclude that Charlemagne revived the "Romanesque" visible

in Italy under Constantine and Theoderic.4 '

Neither Lethaby nor Reber demonstrates Christian art
to be distinct from classical art forms. In an otherwise
unsatisfactory monograph, Margaret A. Bulley depicts the
decline of Graeco-Roman art to have begun in the second
century, and as an independent current of art to have disap-
peared by the fifth. Thus Christian art is viewed as a
response to the decline rather than its cause, a concept
advanced in a different context by J. B. Bury. When in the
_fourth century Christian art assumes a major role it unites
either with the Roman to form the "Romanesque", or the
Greek to form the Byzantine (or Hellenesque after Lethaby).
The dominance of Christian art was assured before the

Empire began its rapid disappearance after 395. Mrs. Bulley,

writing her Ancient and Medieyal Art; A Short History in
1914, agrees with Taylor's analysis that the Middle Ages

 

did not begin suddenly, any more than its appropriate to

think of the Empire failing in 476. One of the reasons

 

4Lethaby, pp. 80-100.

152

for this gradual beginning was the separation in art usages
dividing the Roman Christian world from the pagan barbarian.
Mrs. Bulley uses the presence of such division as an excuse '
for ignoring the eight centuries following, resuming her
narrative with the Gothic Art of the twelfth century.5
Henry Cotterill, Agflggtory of_Art, published in 1922,
also recognized a difference between art usages in the
Christian and pagan worlds, but he interpreted this to be
a mandate to explore more fully the Christian art, which
more immediately supplanted that of the pagans. As ancient
art declined with the political problems of the third
century, so it revived as the political situation improved
in the fourth and fifth. Thus ancient art, although
thoroughly Christianized after the third century, endured
in its ”Romanesque" form into the Middle Ages. The main
features of the architecture of this art are the round
arch style, which is "clearly Roman”, and,.more importantly,
column supports for the arch, also Roman. These first
appear in their most familiar structures, churches, as
the Empire was still declining. When, in the difficulties
arising from the invasions, sculpture, painting and other

modes common to the ancient artist began to disappear,

church work was being produced of "exceedingly beautiful"
character. Although the mosaics which decorated many of

the Romanesque churches were influenced by the Byzantines,

 

5Margaret A. Bulley, Ancient and Medieval Art: A
Short History (London, 1914 , pp. -2 .

t.

I.

I.

153

who after the fifth century were generally present in Venice
or Ravenna, the builders responsible for the design and
construction of these buildings were Christian Romans ac-
complished in an independent Western art form. Charlemagne,
when seeking architects for his new capital to the north,
turned to the ”so-called 'Comacine masters'" of Italy. It
was also from Italy that the Romanesque era of later centu-
ries received its inspiration.6

Not all art historians of the twentieth century are
occupied with the origins of ”Romanesque" or even of
Christian art. Beginning with Josef Strzygowski and Haakon
Shetelig in the 1920's a small but remarkable number of
monographs have been produced attempting to explain the
origins and evolution of Germanic art. Strzygowski pro-

claimed in his pioneering Origin of Christian Church Art7

(1923) and his later anly thygh Apt 1n Egytheyn Egyppr
(1928) that not all that was Christian in early medieval
Europe was Roman Classical. As Ker had done in literature
and Dawson more generally, Strzygowski recognized the
barbaric German to have been independently creative, or

as in the case of much of Germanic art, inspired by the

barbarians' contact with the East. Strzygowski, Shetelig

 

6Henry B. Cotterill, A History of Art (New York,
1922), I, pp. 175-239.

7Josef Strzygowski, Origin quChristian Church Art
(Oxford, 1923).

8Josef Strzygowski, Early Church Art in Northern
Europe (London, 1928).

"\

154

in his earliest work, Préhistoire de la Norvgge9(l926), and

Harold Picton, a student of Strzygowski and author of Early

10

German Art and Its Origins in 1939, maintain a common

thesis. Germanic art can be traced to the contact that
the Germans had in the pre-invasion era with Sarmatians and
Scythians along the Black Sea. From the Sarmatians the
Germans acquired the art of polychrome jewelery, and from
the Scythians the fantastic use of animal ornamentation
everywhere common in Germanic art.ll
After the invasions, which to the Germanic world are
but an aspect of the great migrations or Volkerwanderung,
the Goths and Alans transferred their talent for making
jewelery to the lands in which they settled, i. 8., Spain,
South-West France and Central Europe, and to those peoples
with whom they had close contact, such as the Jutes and
Scandanavians. The influence of the East was not limited
to the few Germans who had once lived there. The Syrians
also influenced the art of the Byzantine Christians.
Pirenne and Dawson therefore considered the meeting of
Germanic and Byzantine art under Charlemagne a reunification

of two families of Syrian or "Eastern” art.12

 

9Haakon Shetelig, ggéhistoire de la Novége (Oslo,
1926).

10Harold Picton, ggrly German Art and its Origins
(London, 1939).

11Strzygowski, Origin, pp. 4-20; Shetelig, pp. 154-59;
Picton, pp. 23-35.

12Shetelig, pp. 150-54; Picton, pp. 29-35.

‘9

155

Dawson for example believes that Shetelig proved that

Classical art in its demise made room for two new currents
of art which flowed into EurOpe during the early Middle Ages.
The one, "Iranian-Gothic”, was carried by the barbarian by
way of the "Russian steppe" to the plains of northern
Europe. The other, ”Syrian-Byzantine", was transmitted
along the Mediterranean to Italy and hence to southern
Europe.13

For Strzygowski and Picton the Germans, whenever
embraced by the Romans, were influenced negatively. Not
satisfied with their own ornamentative art when exposed to
the representational art of Roman Christians, the German
would attempt to emulate that art. In this they failed
miserably. The only exception arose with the case of
Church architecture. Preference for the "Romanesque"
stimulated a very profitable expansion in building churches.
Picton maintains the reason behind what appears to be an
exception is the close resemblance between existing German
structures and the Roman importations. The basilica is in
design little different from the farmhouses prevalent in
most German lands. Thus the insistence of Roman mission-
aries upon the basilica church structure was equalled by
the abilities of artisans to handle the familiar design,

but unable to handle those of the East.14

 

13Dawson, Makinggof Europe, p. 96.

lAPicton, pp. 37-46.

156

More conventional histories of art were soon influ-
enced by the discussions of Strzygowski and Picton. Much
greater attention was given to the accomplishments of the
barbarian, where before the very possibilities of Germanic

art were largely dismissed. The value of admitting the

presence of barbaric art is revealed by Ernst Kitzinger,
Early Medieval Art_in‘the British Museum, 1940. In a
survey which is at once more general, better organized and
more brilliant than those of his predecessors, Kitzinger
gives a most plausible explanation for the evolution of
art during the period in question. And to a large extent
he anticipates those who succeed him.

According to Kitzinger, Graeco-Roman art collapsed

sometime prior to the peace of the church in 313. After
that time art must be considered as medieval, or in the
fourth and fifth centuries as proto-medieval. In the
West, art remained loyal to classical models, but this

loyalty was for a long time smothered by the anti-classical
sympathies of the East and of Christians more generally.

This anti-classical mood was represented by its desire

for the transcendent and symbolic. Thus the use of mosaic
or the deemphasis on sculpture of the human body pre-empted

the stale imitation of classical forms associated with the

late Empire.15

 

15Ernst Kitzinger,l§arly Medieval Art in the British
Museum (London, 1940), pp. 1-20.

157

Among the Germanic peoples of the North an anti-
classical movement in art demonstrated the capacity of the
barbarian in production of fine work, but it was not
normally motivated by a drive for the transcendent. Thus
when the Christian moved into pagan and barbaric lands,
the natives reacted by adopting the art forms of the
missionary. Charlemagne revived the classical, but highly
Christianized art, indigenous to Italy and thereby com-
pleted the destruction of barbarian art.16

Kitzinger insists upon the transitional nature of the
early medieval period. In this he follows the lead of Moss,
who only a few years earlier had discovered that the tran-
sitional nature of the history of art was consistent with
the cultural and political history of the early medieval
period. Moss had come upon his interpretation somewhat
independently of scholarly information, but Artz, who also
believes in the transitional thesis, relies very heavily
upon Kitzinger and Morey for his discussions of art.

The themes emphasized by Kitzinger appear again in
one of the standard histories of medieval art, that of
Charles Morey, Medtuwal Art, 1942. It is Morey's claim
that, "Every growth proceeds from a decay".17 Medieval
art grew out of the decay of classical art after the
second century. Medieval art succeeded what was in fact
a post-classical art in two forms or styles, both of

lBKitzinger, pp. 19-38.

l7Charles Rufus Morey, Mediaeval Art (New York, 1942),
p. 21.

 

158

which were Italian or Roman in nature. The Alexandrian art
style emphasized landscapes as a part of the normal use of
representational arts. The Neo-Attic art style was more
decorative and lent itself well to art preferences of the
of the East. Both styles were introduced just prior to

the founding of the Empire, and flourished as late as the
second century. They declined until the fourth century;
the Alexandrian style suffered the most, and in the fifth
century they became obscure.18

With the introduction of Christian art, Hellenic art
was no longer vital, but the tradition of its two styles
reappear in a similar dichotomy within Christian art. Thus
Byzantine art tended to be decorative, and Romanesque, once
established in later centuries, was often representational.
Romanesque art reached maturity after the Carolingian
revival during which the "vigorous and primitive genius
of Celtic-Teutonic Culture"19 became infused with the post-
Hellenic style of the Christians.

Early Christian art originated in the third century,
and during the fourth and fifth centuries virtually absorbed
whatever features of Hellenic art it found consistent with
its motives. Later in the sixth and seventh centuries
Eastern Christian art adopted a Byzantine character which
by the eighth century was firmly fixed in that part of the

 

18Morey, pp. 19-45.

19Morey, p. 6.

 

159

world. In the West, Christian art was more fluid, and
remained until the ninth century a reflection of Hellenic,
Christian and Byzantine political and cultural domination.20

Barbarian art, Morey argues, borrowed from East, but
not from classical or Byzantine arts. Therefore when it
came into contact with the Roman Church, barbarian art
provided the original inspiration which resulted in
Romanesque art. Christian art was more sophisticated than
that of the barbarian and it is to this sophistication that
the qualities of Germanic surrendered. At first the
collision produced grotesque human forms and course orna-
mentation. Particularly with Merovingian illumination the
weaknesses of barbarian capacity to reproduce the naturalism
of the classics is very evident. But as the barbarian
adjusted to the needs of Christianity he was able to
produce art work of very high quality.21

It had been conventional for historians of Germanic
art to emphasize its distinctness from the art of the
Patristic age and of Rome generally. Similar efforts
among cultural historians had pointed to the individual
nature of German culture prior to the conversion of the
North by the Church. A reaction to these efforts are
conspicuous in the decade following World War II, during

 

20M0rey, pp. 80-92 and 177-85.

21M0rey, Pp. 80-92.

‘ .

160

which the German became once again, in the eyes of many
Western historians, a vulgar barbarian. Thus Haakon Shetelig,
who had been among the first to express that the German had
a genius quite free from Roman penetration, wrote in 1949
of a theme indicated by the title of his book, Classical
Igpulses in Scandanavian_A£t,22 and Wilhelm Holmqvist,
insisted that Rome was the main source of Germanic art, in
Germanicgéyt_puring‘the First MillenniumyA, D.

In the estimation of Holmqvist, Germanic art cannot
be distinguished from that of primitive cultures until the
Roman expansion in the first century B. 0.. During the
following millennium, the thousand years which delimit the
duration of Germanic art, Rome continued to provide the
stimulus for the achievements in art by the barbarians.
Transmitters of this Roman influence were the art craftsmen
of the Roman provinces who had intercourse with both the
Roman and German, and provided many of the art products
for the Germans which required technical skill. After the
fifth century Germanic art became increasingly less imitative,
but as it gained independence, what quality it had, declined,
and it acquired those crude forms that invoke the condem-
nation of men like Lot.23

Unlike Lot, however, HdMqvist judges the decadent

nature of Germanic art after the fifth century to represent

 

22Haakon Shetelig, Classical Impulses in Scandanavian
Art (Cambridge, 1949).

23Wilhelm Holmqvist, Germanic Art during the First
MillenniuméA} D, (Stockholm, 1955). pp. 27-49.

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161

the dislocation of craftsmen separated from their normal
sources of inspiration, as opposed to some lack of ability
on part of the craftsman themselves. Until the ninth
century, when Germanic art disappeared it continued to
disintegrate before expanding influence of another Rome,
that of the Church. Christian culture was not diluted by
a buffer group (Roman Provinces) before coming into confron-
tation with thebarbarians, and thus its pure and more
powerful stature overwhelmed rather than inspired the
artists of the North. As the latter succumbed they left
with Christian culture certain stylistic features visible
throughout the Middle Ages. Thus Gothic art is a legacy
and not, as Morey would assert, a result of the barbarian
adjusting to the needs of Christian art.2#

A middle ground between Strzygowski and Holmqvist is
achieved by Marvin Ross and Philippe Verdier who together
produced Agts of the Migration Period in the Walters Art
Gallery in 1961. They defend Holmqvist in that Germanic
art was most certainly influenced by its contact with
Hellenic or Roman art, but they return to Morey and
indirectly to Strzygowski when attempting to explain the
more ultimate sources of the models which the Germans
used. Polychrome styles came, for example, from the
Sarmatian, Roxolan and Alan tribes of Southern Russia

between the Black and Caspian Seas. As opposed to

 

2I‘LHolmqVist, pp. 39-49.

162

Holmqvist's thesis that Christian art produced the death
blow to a Germanic art already in decline, Verdier and

Ross attempt to show Germanic art was in no way decadent

at the time it was confronted with Christian art. Actually
Germanic art was in most ways so similar to Christian art
that when they were brought into ”severe contact" it could
not maintain its integrity and was almost immediately
submerged. There can be no doubt that Germanic art is a
direct forerunner to medieval art, if Verdier is correct
in assuming that "Gothic" and medieval are indeed synonymous
terms. For there is a close connection between the cut
glass and handicrafts of the Gothic period with the
polychrome and handicrafts of Germanic art.25
Apart from the variety of opinions about the importance
and evolution of Germanic art, discussion of Christian art
was by no means settled by the presentations of Morey.
Within the last decade three works of note have been written
on the Christian art. Each presents a different view, and
yet all are different from those points expressed by Morey.
In 1957 D. Talbot Rice wrote The Beginnings of Christian
Ag; and Andre Graber.E§r1y Medieval Painting from the
Egggth to thenglevgpth Century. Four years later Eduard
Syndicus completed‘Egrly Christianfigyt. Graber recalls
the disposition of Rand and the Patristic group. On the

one hand he denies the pronouncements of unnamed parties

25Marvin C. Ross and Philippe Verdier, Arts of the
Migration Period ipithe Walters Art Galleyy (Baltimore,
19 l ’ pp. 21-290

 

163

who pointing to the paucity of early medieval art, would
declare the period to have little merit. And on the other
he finds early medieval art, particularly. painting, to
have significance in very few places, and then at diverse
times. For example, during the fifth and sixth centuries
Rome and Ravenna were the two centers of artistic pro-
duction, but in the seventh and eighth the center shifted

to Ireland and England and in the ninth century to France.26

Whenever and wherever painting was fashioned during
the early medieval centuries it had a high Christian con-
tent. Illumination of books was notan exception to this
generalization, although before the seventh century book
illumination most closely resembled its ancient origins.
As Islam expanded in the seventh century, the center of
gravity moved north and art, as with culture generally,
put on the garb of English monks. Graber is in this case
inclined towards the Pirenne thesis when he divides
Christian history with the seventh century. Earlier times
he more‘closely associated with Latin antiquity and later
times with the Middle Ages.27

Writing in the same year as Graber, Rice essentially
agrees with Graber. Early Christian art is, with the

exception of thematic material, nearly indistinguishable

 

26Andre Graber and Carl Nordenfalk, Early Medieval
Iaintinggfrom the Fourth to the Eleventh Century, trans.
Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1957). PP. 9-21.

27Graber, pp. 87-107.

164

from the Hellenic forms which chronologically preceded it.
That is Christians borrowed or selected from the Alexandrian
form certain conceptions of the ”picturesque" and from
Pompeii the "expressionistic". When it "came above ground"
in 313 Christian art quickly assumed a proto-Byzantine
character. Byzantine and Christian art between the fifth
and eighth centuries are one and the same, but with the
iconoclastic struggle at the beginning of the eighth
century, a "Roman" school of art developed which under
Charles the Great becomes very distinct from the Byzantines.
As the "Roman" form of Christian art developed under the
patronage of the popes, Benedictine monks and the court of
Charles, its conservative nature was assured, and is thus
thought of as a return to the early centuries of the
Patristic Age in Italy.28

Syndicus is convinced that the Christian themes to
which Rice alludes are far more important than what is
borrowed from the Hellenic art which happened to be in
the same localeas a particular Christian artist. Unlike
the borrowings from Hellenic art, the themes of Christian
art are general and consistent throughout its long history.
Syndicus thinks it worth noting that Christians did not
appropriate from classical Hellenic art its refined tech-

nique, or rather made no effort to sustain their refinement.

This is but one example of how what is hostile to Christian

 

2813. Talbot Rice,_The Beginnings of Christian Art
(New York. 1957). pp. 19451.

r“

165

theology is simply ignored when produced artistically.

Early Christian art was very fond of symbolic portrayals
of Christ as the shepherd or the teacher, and both are
portrayals current in third century literature. But
perhaps the most pOpular image to be found in Christian
art is that of the 'orante', the human figure praying with
arms outstretched after the fashion recommended by Origen

in'De Oratione.29 Aside from painting, Christians made

 

use of classical materials in architecture such as with the
basilica and martyrium. Again what was borrowed from the
classics was remade in the Christian image.30

During the Volkerwanderung, the barbariars were highly
imitative of existing Christian art because they were awed
by the Romans civilization and wanted to be accepted as
equals to the Romans. Syndicus adapts here an idea
presented by Wallace-Hadrill in 1952. As to the sources
of Germanic art, Syndicus follows the compromising position
of Verdier and Ross. The technique of Germanic art is
Sarmatian in origin, and is by nature decorative. When the
Teuton copied from Hellenic and Christian art forms his
imagination tended to be more disciplined, but this also
tended to ossify his imagination when the contact was

prolonged as it was after the fifth century.31

@9See discussion of De Oratione and Jean Daniélou,
Ori en, trans. Walter Mitchell (New York, 1955). PP. 28-32.

 

A 30Eduard Syndicus, Early Christian Art, trans. J. P.
Foster, Vol. 121 of Twentieth Century EncyElopaedia of
Catholicism, ed. Henri Daniel-Rops (New York, 1962), pp. 7-35.

31Syndicus, pp. 154-64.

166

There are some inter-relationships between the his-
torian of art and those who write more general histories.
Often the cultural historian looks to the historian of art
for support or suggestion when forming the contents of his
surveys. Dawson follows Shetelig, Lot and Moss are de-
pendent upon Strzygowski and Bark discovers in Morey and
in a work by Henri Foncillon the substance of his knowledge
of art. Pirenne was very fond of the views of Louis Brehier
and Nils Aberg when he presented his brief review of art,
and these views closely resemble those of Lethaby and
Strzygowski. Nor is the exchange entirely one-sided.

Reber and Lethaby maintained the thesis of centinuity of
Roman art through the invasion period in a manner not
unlike that of Fustel de Coulanges, Bury and later Pirenne.
Cotterill thought of the third through sixth centuries as
transitional as did Lot in the early twenties. Kitzinger
suggested a strong familiarity with the transitional thesis
of Moss and Artz.

Observers of early medieval culture are far more
dependent upon the historian of art than vice-versa. With
the exception of Kitzinger there is little evidence that
the historians of art has been very directly indebted to
the cultural historian for his impressions of the period
of which he writes. Whenever a theme can be found in

common not only is the parentage questionable, it is not

even certain the themes are in fact rtlatbd at all. It is

167

safer to insist that what inter-relationships the historian
of early medieval art might have with those of early medieval

culture have been to the benefit of the latter.

CHAPTER VII

CONCEPTIONS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
BY THE HISTORIANS OF PHILOSOPHY

Histories of medieval philosophy are even a more modern
invention than those of the art or culture of the Middle Ages.
As was the case of medieval studies generally before the
nineteenth century.observers thought that intellectually
man had entered upon a long period of inactivity and slumber
after the fifth century and did not awaken until certain
Italians initiated ”the great age" of the Renaissance. But
unlike medieval law or literature,to which the historians
of the first half of the nineteenth century devoted con-
siderable attention, medieval philosophy was not only not
studied, it was thought not to exist.

Beginning with Xavier Rousselot,.itudes sur la
ggggosgphie du Meyen Age, in 1840-42, a number of scholars
established that there had indeed been philos0phical specu-
lation in the Middle Ages, and that quite probably there had
been an abundance of such speculation. Of the most early
examinations into medieval philos0phy the greater majority
were concerned with philosophers popular within the Catholic
tradition as theologians. Charles de Rémusat wrote a two
volumed study of Abélard in 1845 and Victor Cousin edited

the works of the same man in 1836.1

 

1Charles de Rémusat, Abélard (2 vols.: Paris, 1845);
Victor Cousin, Ouvrages inédits d[Abélard (Paris, 1836).

169

Ignorance of the philosophical contributions of medi-
eval thought arose from the confusion by medieval thinkers
between what was properly understood as philosophical and
what was theological. As early as the second century
Christians had as theologians labored to make philosophy
the "handmaiden of theology". How successful they were in
this task is subject to debate, but that medieval theo-
logians thought philosophy had been subordinated to theology
there can be little doubt. With the Renaissance theology
had become associated with the teachings of the schoolmen
and hence called scholasticism. Scholasticism was also used
to designate the philosophy of the schoolmen by Renaissance
philosophers. Historians of the nineteenth century in-
herited both the confusion of theology with philosophy in
medieval thought and the application of the label of
scholasticism to both during the Renaissance.

Jean B. Hauréau wrote in 1850 De la Philos0phie
Sghglastigue and between 1872 and 1880 Histoire de la
philosophie Scholastique. Albert St'dckl added in 1864-66
Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters to the growing
list of histories of philosophy, but it was not until the
last decades of the nineteenth century that critical his-
torical methods were applied to the study of medieval
thought. Most important to later scholarship was Herman
Reuter, Geschichte der relggidsen Aufklérung im Mittelalter,
first published in two volumes in 1875-77. Of almost equal
stature to the study of Reuter was that of Heinrich von

170

Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung,
which was completed in 1888.

Reginald Lane Poole gave Reuter considerable defer-
ence in the preface to his Illustyations of the History of
Medieval Thought and Learning and acknowledged that the
first half of his book follows "pretty closely the scheme"
of Reuter. Poole observed, however, "that the field which
Reuter surveyed needed an introduction". The introduction
Poole provided is most important for it is perhaps the
first recognition of the significant role early medieval
thought had in the formation of medieval philosophy.2

It is Poole's contention that medieval thought was
not particularly original, but it would be a mistake to
confuse the absence of originality with strict conformity.
It is not "the power with which men used their intellects"
that distinguished one medieval thinker from another, but
"the skill with which they used their materials."3 Reuter
had defined the mode of medieval thought to be predomi-
nantely theological and to this Poole for the most part
agrees, but for Poole there existed beneath the formalism
of theology a variety of speculations that were philosophical.

Never in the history of Christendom, Poole asserts,
did the "hard shell of its dogmatic system" remove all room

4

"for individual liberty of opinion." During the Middle

 

2Reginald Lane Poole, Illustrations of the History of
Medieval Thought and Learning (2d. ed.; London, 1920) p. vi.

3Poole, p. 1.

4Poole, pp. 2-3.

171

Ages theologians often started with the same traditional
authorities and nearly always arrived at theologically
correct conclusions. They varied widely, however, in the
judgments they made with respect to the authorities at
hand in arriving at those conclusions. It is with this
range of "accomodation" Poole thinks the historian of
philosophy must concentrate his attentions.5
In addition to providing an account of the origins
of philosophy in the thought of medieval men who, he admits,
always thought and expressed themselves "theologically",
Poole indicates that early medieval thought anticipates
the "scholasticism" of the Middle Ages. As the western
Church assumed a major role in society, learning became
restricted to the clergy and monks. As churchmen they were
inclined to give attention to the advancement of Christianity
to the disadvantage of other studies. The pagan schools
were allowed to die out, once the cathedral and monastic
establishments were capable of meeting the needs of
Christian education.6
The fall of the Empire was not so great a loss,
Poole insists. The society upon which the Empire was
built was subjugated to serve the ends of a few, and its

"fabric was but a step less barbarous than that of the

Teutonic civilization by which it was confronted."7

 

SPoole, p. 4.
6Poole, pp. 4-5.
7Poole, p. 6.

172

Nonetheless the loss of classical scholarship as a sacri-
fice to the success of the Church is to be regretted. Poole
shows no doubt that the cause of the "retrogression" in
learning was the hostility the Church showed towards
classical letters. He cites in particular Gregory's desire
to eliminate all pagan literature.
‘All that prevented the Middle Ages from a more im-
poverished heritage was the exemption of Ireland from
the "authority" of the Church with respect to education.
Centered in the Irish Christian community was a remarkable
literary tradition where "the stream of classical learning
had remained pure". From the Irish and their English
converts learning was for a time restored to the continent
under the rule of Charles the Great. Unfortunately the
sons of Charles were unable to sustain this restoration,
and once again Europe fell into "darkness".8
Quite like the positivists who were writing history
at the same time as he was, Poole visibly was nationalistic
in the high praise he gives the Irish. He resembled Taylor,
who he anticipated in many respects, in arriving at fairly
sound conclusions, but for all the wrong reasons. Poole
was guessing when he accorded the Irish such a prominent
position in the history of early medieval thought and as
if in acknowledgment of this,historians of philosophy have
uniformly ignored Irish scholarship since Poole wrote in

1884.

 

8Poole, pp. 9-23.

173

Poole demonstrated a dependency upon the scholarship
of Reuter, and this was also in some respects true of
Wilhelm Windelband, who in 1892 wrote one of the first
comprehensive histories of philosophy to include a general
discussion of the philosophy of the Middle Ages. Windelband
reflected his knowledge of Reuter throughout his analysis
of medieval philosophy, but like Poole he recognized a
need to provide an introduction to this analysis. The
introduction Windelband provided, however, must be under-
stood in terms of his motivation for writing A History of
Philosophy.

Windelband was convinced by Hegel that history was a
continuous evolutionary process involving a succession of
theses, antitheses and syntheses. But he agreed with
Burckhardt that within history certain epochs could be
discerned by the distinct nature of the culture each period
presents. By "an all-sided, unprejudiced investigation of
the facts.",9 Windelband argued that the opinions of Hegel
and Burckhardt might be made compatible. Using an "syn-
optical and critical method" Windelband searched European
philosophy for the ideas current to individual epochs, and
then related them to the more general movements of philo-
s0phic conceptions that have been evolving since the
Greeks. For Windelband the ideas of any one epoch con-

tributed to the conceptions of the next, and together all

 

9Wilhelm Windelband, History of Philosgphy, trans.
James H. Tufts (New York, 1958), I, p. ix.

174

philosophic ideas contributed in some way to those of the
present.10 For these reasons an introduction of medieval
philosophy requires a discussion of "Hellenistic-Roman
Philosophy".

Beginning with the Jewish philosophers of the first
century A. D., ancient philosophy entered upon a "Religious
Period". Central to the problems of this period were the
relationships of authority to revelation, of spirit to
matter and of God to the world. Solutions to these problems
were offered by both the Christians and the neo-Platdnists..
In each case the answers provided by the Christian appear

again in the scholastic position in the Middle Ages and the
neo-Platonist response was followed by the medieval mystics.
Additionally, alongside the scholastic and mystic philoso-
phies of the Middle Ages a third philosophy existed which
was secular and represented a continuation of ancient

scientific philosophy.11

Although medieval philosophical positionswere in many
ways anticipated by philosophies of the Roman 'Religious
period', the connection was not simple and direct. Inter-
rupting the evolution of ideas was the devastation of the
Empire by the migrating Germans. In face of the barbarian
conquests the Roman State and Roman mind were helpless;

only the power of the Church prevented ancient civilization

 

loWindelband, pp. ix-xii.

llWindelband, pp. 219-62.

175

from completely disappearing. As a consequence of the unique
position the Church held during the centuries following the
'fall' of the Empire the only portion of ancient culture
which was at first transmitted to the Middle Ages was wholly
Christian in content.12

Without the efforts of Augustine the philosophy of
the Middle Ages might have suffered greatly under the tute-
lage of the Church. Windelband considered Augustine the
"true teacher" of medieval nations. Through Augustine the
union of Christian and neo-Platonic thought that became
the basis of medieval philosophies was accomplished. That
Augustine embraced within his system the various philoso-
phies of the Patristic Age was.not evident to observers of
the centuries immediately following his death. Windelband
attributed this ignorance to the restrictions placed upon
the use of non-Christian materials by the Church in the
fifth and sixth centuries.13

In the early medieval 'schools' instruction was
limited to what was most necessary for the training of the
clergy. Additional instruction in the arts, when possible,
was restricted by the small number of useful texts. Ele-
mentary logical treatises were the most abundant, and for
this reason the philosophic activity of the early Middle

Ages was directed toward the learning and practice of

 

12Windelband, pp. 263-69.
13Windelband, pp. 276-84.

176

logic so that religious dogma and the content of Christian
tradition might be best set forth and elaborated upon. This
activity provided in the ninth century the beginnings of
independent reflection in the form of inquiries as to the
significance of logical relations. Out of these inquiries
arose scholastic philosophy and in reaction to these
inquiries a return to mySticism.14
Windelband constantly strove to find in the philosophy
of the Middle Ages the sources of nineteenth century "scien-
tific philosophy". His effort forced him to draw rather
sharp distinctions between the various "strands" of medieval
thought and produced a close association of "scientific
philosophy" with scholasticism and ancient secular thought.
During the twentieth century historians of philosophy have
sought to pursue scientific philosophy and hence have concen-
trated upon scholasticism. A few historians have recognized
that philosophy might be religious as well as scientific,
and have carried out studies of "religious philosophy" during
the Middle Ages. Windelband offers what was probably the

initial justification for the division of the history of
philosophy into scientific and religious.15

Within a year after Windelband first produced A

History of Philosophy Maurice de Wulf completed the first

of what proved to be a series of volumes on the history of

 

14Windelband, pp. 264-65.

15Below, pp. 178-9 and 185-6 .

177

scholastic philosophy. This first work, titled History of
gpholasticjghilosophy in the Low Countries, inspired a more
comprehensive history which appeared in 1900 as History of
‘Medbeval Philosophy. In the six editions of the History
appearing before his death in 1947, De Wulf extensively
expanded and revised the original French text, but con-
sistently maintained two important themes. He held that
scholastic philosophy was distinct from scholastic theology
during the Middle Ages and furthermore that scholastic
philosophy consisted of certain doctrines common to most
of medieval philosophy.

De Wulf argued that the close identification of medi-
eval with scholastic philosophy was a product of the
Renaissance. He conferred upon this identification his
stamp of approval; He reasoned his definition for scholastic
encompassed all the truly philosophic activity of the Middle
Ages. When De Wulf used scholasticism in terms of philos0phy
he refsmnd to that philosophy that was "taught in the schools
of the Middle Ages", "practiced typical methods of systema-
tization", was "religious" and "subordinate to dogma", and
provided answers to the great philosophic problems of any
age in its doctrines and its systems.16

Armed with what is a very eclectic and encompassing
definition De Wulf attacks the history of early medieval

 

16Maurice De Wulf History of Mediaeval Philgsgphy,
trans. Ernest C. Messenger (6th. ed.} New York, 1952),
I, pp. 16-170

178

philosophy. In his sixth edition, published in 1947, De Wulf
followed closely the transitional theses of Taylor and
Laistner. Following the collapse of the Empire western
European culture entered into a period of transition lasting
until the Carolingian era. In the eighth and ninth centuries
a new civilization arose which De Wulf identified as medieval.
During the transitional period three factors, "Roman civili-
zation", "world Christianity" and the "new races" of Celts
and Germans, were "passively" fused into "complex nations."l7

Out of Roman civilization intellectual materials were
drawn that were transferred to the barbarians through the
educational facilities of monastic schools. In the early
Middle Ages the monastic schools of Ireland were the most
remarkable.18 The program of studies employed in the
monastic schools did not include philosophy as a subject
until the twelfth century. During the early medieval period
the very absence of philosophical materials precluded the
possibility of mature philoSOphic undertakings. When such
materials became available in the twelfth and later centuries
they were employed with considerable vigor.

De Wulf cites several writers from the fourth to the
eighth centuries who may be counted as philosophers. In
the fourth and fifth centuries Chalcidius, Marius Victorinus,
Macrobius and Martianus Capella combined certain Roman

philosophical ideas with the Christian thought of the

 

17De Wulf, p. 43.

18De Wulf, p. 50.

179

Patristic Age. The importance of the last Roman philoso-
phers is overshadowed by Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionysius,
whose thought not only dominated the fifth century, but many
of the succeeding centuries as well. Gregory I, Boethius,
Cassiodorus and Isidore were to De Wulf the first medieval
thinkers, and along with Bede completed his list of notable
intellectuals during the period of transition before the
eighth century.19

Considering the compass of his study De Wulf gave
ample space to the philosophies of most of the intel-
lectuals that dotted the era of transition from the fourth
to the eighth century, but much of what he wrote on early
medieval philosophers was in response to works written of
these intellectuals in the nearly fifty years that tran-
spired after De Wulf wrote his first edition. Among these
works were definitive studies of Isidore by Ernest Brehaut
and of Boethius by Howard Rollin Patch and numerous works
on Augustine. Several studies on individual philosophers
were prepared during this time by Etienne Gilson, aihis-
torian of philosophy who along with De Wulf has molded
contemporary impressions of medieval philosophy.

In addition to his studies of individual medieval
philosophers Gilson has provided from time to time more
general works on medieval philoSOphy that are considered

by many to be the definitive histories for this subject.

 

19De Wulf, pp. 77-120.

180

The first of these histories appeared in 1921 under the
title Etudes de Philosophie médiévale. Since then he has
written The Spirit of Medieval Philos0phy (1936), Egg
[Epilosophy of the Middle Ages (1936), and A History of
Christian Philos0phy in the Middle Ages (1955). In his
Spirit of Medieval Philosophy Gilson seeks to establish
as valid the use of the term medieval as a modifier of
philos0phy and secondly that the philosophy of the Middle
Ages was essentially Christian.

After 1944 Gilson included the expression "Christian
philosophy" in the titles of many of his works. He reasons
that the common feature of philosophers after the second
century in the West was the Christian content of their
writings and the profession of Christian beliefs amidst
their philoSOphical speculations. Within Christian phi-
losophy scholasticism played an important and at times
dominant role, but as a label for post-classical philoso-
phies or for medieval philosophy it is too limited to serve
the needs of historians of the philoSOphy of this period.20

Gilson seeks to include in his histories the whole
range of medieval philosophies which Windelband suggests
might have existed. Gilson like Windelband gives specific
recognition of scholastic and mystical philosophers and of
medieval "theologians", but his enumeration is misleading.

Gilson continues to interpret what is meant by philosophy

 

20Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philos0phy in
the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), pp. 4-6.

181

in a narrow and restrictive sense in the manner established

by Windelband and De Wulf. Gilson seeks to present medi-
eval philos0phers in such a way that they might be reasonably
considered the equals of philOSOphers in any other age. He
therefore skims over many medieval philosophers worthy of
the name and distorts the nature of many of the philosophers
he does present. Also his histories are technical to the
point they exclude important cultural and intellectual
information that relates the philos0phers of the medieval
period to the culture in which they lived.

More serious is the affect which Gilson's attitude
towards the history of medieval philosophy has towards
study of the philosophy of the early Middle Ages. Gilson
like De Wulf and Windelband before him finds no need to
examine intellectuals of the seventh and eighth centuries.
A one page dismissal of the period intervening between the

Patristic and the Carolingian Ages illustrates the weaknesses

of Gilson's approach.21

Gilson is not alone in thinking the seventh and eighth
centuries as unworthy of greater exploration. Several
cultural historians including Rand, McGiffert, Lot and
Duckett held the same view as Gilson and wrote about the
same time. Among historians of philosophy the position
elaborated by Gilson has been predominant in this century.
Illustrating the dependency of twentieth century historians

 

21Gilson, p. 111.

182

of philosophy upon Gilson are G. G. Coulton, Studies in
Medieval Thought (1940); S. J. Curtis, A Short History of

Western Philos0phy in the Middle Ages (1950); Anne Fremantle,
The Ag; of Belief (1954); Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought From
Saint Augustine to Ockham (1958); David Knowles, Tpp
Evolution of Mgdipval Thought (1962); Armand Maurer, Medieval
Philosophy (1962); and Julius Weinberg, A Short History of
Medieval Philosophy (1964).22

Admittedly all of these histories are one volume works

 

and the first four named are really little more than hand-
books. But they must suffice as examples since they
encompass nearly all that is available on this subject.
Not all of these works completely ignore the seventh and
eighth century intellectuals. Coulton and Leff, for
example, discuss Isidore briefly. Fremantle and Maurer
study Augustine, Boethius and Erigena alone and Curtis,
Knowles and Weinberg add to these three early medieval
philosophers the name of the Pseudo-Dionysius. Coulton
and Leff investigate, although very briefly, Cassiodorus,
Isidore, Gregory and Anglo-Saxon writers in addition to
the four philosophers of the early Middle Ages enumerated

by Curtis, Knowles and Weinberg.

 

22G. G. Coulton, Studies in Medieval Thought (London,
1940); S. J. Curtis, AZShort History of Western Philosophy
in the Middle Ages (London, 1950); Anne Fremantle, The Age
of Belief (New York, 1961); Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought
from Saint Augustine to Ockham (Baltimore, 1958); David
Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (Baltimore, 1962);
Armand A. Maurer, Medieval Philosophy, Vol. II of A History
of Philosophy1 ed. Etienne Gilson (4 vols.; New York, 1962);
Julius R. Weinberg, A Short History of Medieval Philos0phy
(Princeton, 1964).

 

183

Coulton is interesting in another respect. The purpose
to which he directs his study closely resemble those ex-
pressed by Burns. Coulton observes, and Burns would in
principle agree:

We stand in this generation at one of the

greatest crises ever recorded, especially for
the educated. . . . and the nearest approach
in past history to that conflict is the story

of those Ages which followed upon the fall of‘

the Roman Empire, and from which Europe emerged
very slowly. . . . the lessons we have to learn
from those times often bear very directly upon
some of the most insistent of present-day
problems.2

Although Coulton differs from Burns in what he thinks
happened in the early Middle Ages, that he attempts to write
his history of medieval philosophy in terms of his interpre-
tation of early medieval culture sets him apart from other
historians of philosophy.

Of the histories of philosophy that follow the Windelband-
De Wulf-Gilson tradition only one has been written on a scale
equal to those acknowledged classics. Frederich Copleston
wrote his Mediaeval Philosophy in 1950 as the second of the
five volumes of A History of Philosophy. Of particular note
in Copleston's treatment of the early Middle Ages was the
thorough analysis he gave Augustine and his unusually long
examination of the Pseudo-Dionysius. Otherwise Copleston
was conventional in his treatment of Boethius, Cassiodorus

and Isidore as the last philosophers before the Carolingian

 

23Coulton, pp. 9-10; above PD. 127'28-

184

Renaissance and in his conviction that only those intel-
lectuals who write 'scientific' or speculative philosophy
are worthy of study.

Copleston did not distinguish between scholastic and
mystical philosophers in the manner suggested by Windelband
and followed by Weinberg, but neither did heefiopt the labels
offered by De Wulf or Gilson. Copleston was just not inter-
ested in classifying medieval philosophers into 'schools'.
For him such groupings denied the individuality of the
philosophers in question, and in any case could not with
meaning be applied tomedieval philosophers. Copleston
stands pretty much alone on this point although Coulton and
Fremantle did not organize their books about any of the
themes offered by Windelband, De Wulf and Gilson.

Windelband had set the pattern for most of twentieth
century philOSOphy when he recognized three strains of
thought during the Middle Ages which could be identified
as philosophical. Windelband presumed these strains were
most marked after Augustine but recognized within the Empire
a group of religious philosophers that anticipated medieval
philosoPhy. De Wulf chose to identify medieval philos0phy
with the scholastic strain and hence like Copleston dated
the beginnings of medieval philos0phy with the writings of
Augustine. Gilson found in the studies which Adolf Harnack
made of Patristic thought support for his contention that
Christian and medieval philosophy began in the second and
third centuries. Thus Gilson included a number of the

185

philosophers of the "Religious Period" in Windelband's
history as belonging to the Christian philosophers of the
Middle Ages.

For Harry Wolfson medieval philosophy began when
Philo first compared Scripture to philOSOphic writings.
Like Windelband, Wolfson thought medieval meant philosophy
which was not ancient, but Wolfson also thought that both
ancient and modern philos0phy were distinct from medieval
in that they did not attempt to apply Scripture to philo-
sophic speculation. Therefore what was a religious period
in ancient philosophy for Windelband was the beginning of
medieval or "scriptural religious philos0phy" for Wolfson.24

In his main text, Structure and Growth of Philosophic
Systems From Plato to Spinoza, Wolfson has included in the
"early medieval period" early Christian philosophers such
as Tertullian, Clement and Origen that were also cited by
Gilson, together with Jews of Alexandria, most notable of
which is Philo, who lived in the first century. Gilson,
Copleston and others have chapters on medieval Jewish and
Islamic philosophy in recognition of the influence they
had upon medieval Christian philosophers. Wolfson included
Jewish and Islamic philosophy within his history because
they were an integral part of medieval philosophy. Judaism,

 

24Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of

Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianipy and Islam,
Vol. II: Structure and Growth of Philosophic Systems from

{glato to Spinoza (Cambridge, 1948), I, pp. v-vii and 115-

63; Harr ustr n Wolfson Religious Philosophy: A Group
9f Essayg fNew York, 1965), pp. 1-5.

 

 

186

Christianity and Islam were three religions contributing to
a "homogeneous, if not thoroughly unified, system of
thought."25

Quite obviously Wolfson did not think De Wulf was
correct in limiting histories of medieval philosophy to
scholasticism, even if De Wulf could accomodate all Western
philos0phers from Augustine to the Renaissance under that
label. Nor did Gilson offer much improvement when he
limits his history to Christian philosophy. A11 religious
philOSOphers have made use of Scripture and have arrived
at a constant set of philosophic principles, Wolfson
claims. Therefore they should be grouped together is
medieval philosophers.

Common to all religious philosophy was the belief

that the one infallible source of truth was revelation as
embodied in Scripture. Medieval philosophers recognized
that not all knowledge was furnished to them by Scripture;
some must be acquired by their use of reason, and much of
the truth to be found by reason was expressed in the
philos0phic literature of the Greeks. Since all truth was
authored by God, the medieval philosophers were convinced
there could be no conflict between the truth they found

by reason and that found by revelation. Apparent conflicts
were the fault of the philosopher, Wolfson says, not of the

text.26

 

25Wolfson, Philo, II, pp. 443-46.

26Wolfson, Philo, II, pp. 446-47,

187

The truths revealed by Scripture and essential to all
religious philos0phers were the existence of God, the unity
of God, divine providence, divine creation of the world and
the divine origin of the rules for human conduct. Reason
provided the medieval philosophers with proofs for the ex-
istence of God and the truth of His unity, but Greek
philosophic literature did not agree with Scripture as to
the nature of God and His relation to the world. God was

both uncreated and creator,but according to Scripture His

essence could not be known contrary to what is taught in
the texts of philosophy. Scripture also verifies that God
created the world out of nothing, was cause of its
preservation, its governance and its order, again contrary
to the reason of the Greek philos0phers. That the religious
philosophers knew that God granted man freedom, a freedom
that permitted man a certain independence of natural law
and hence allowed men to perform miracles was confirmed by
Scripture but not by reason. Scripture in opposition with
reason assures the religious philos0pher that God gave man
an immortal soul and perfect rules of conduct by which he

should live.27
There are within these truths revealed to the religious

philosophers by Scripture numerous inferred truths that were
amplified by the philos0phic texts, Wolfson points out.
But--and this was Wolfson's main point--a11 of the above

mentioned truths were known to Philo just as they were to

 

27Wolfson, Philo, II, pp. 448-57.

188

all of his successors, and were agreed upon by them until
Spinoza in the seventeenth century cast doubt upon them and
thus initiated modern, non-religious philosophy. Whlfson
acknowledged the existence, alongside early medieval phi-
losophy, of philos0phies that did not relate Scripture to
the Greek philosophic writings. He does not find this
contradictory to his contention that medieval and religious
philosophy were the same, however. Non-religious philosophy
during the first and second centuries was ancient, just as
non-religious philosophy before the mid-seventeenth century
was modern, although in either case they might overlap in
time with medieval philosophy.

Wolfson has had little affect upon the historians of
philosophy. His has been like a voice from the wilderness.
No general history of philosophy has been written after
his point of view, but several specialized studies related
to early medieval philos0phy give indications of increasing
recognition of his point of view. In many respects Wolfson
resembles the positions taken by Cochrane, Burns, Halecki
and Bark in cultural history. He has begun a redefinition
of what is meant by medieval and ancient, and has demonstrated
that conventional approaches to the thought of the early
Middle Ages have for the most part been inadequate.

Wolfson contended, as did Coulton, and among cultural
historians Burns, Bark and Leclercq, that early medieval

philosophy was in no way inferior to ancient or modern

philosophy. He made this contention on the grounds that

189

early medieval philosophers sought answers to old problems
in an unique and profitable way, not because ancient, medi-
eval and modern philosophy shared the same philosophic
techniques and differ only in mental outlook as Gilson or

De Wulf maintain. Furthermore it is not sufficient to give
credit only to the philosophers of the Middle Ages for the
religious philosophy they produced. Philo and others during
the ten or more centuries prior to the Middle Ages of the
scholastics held the same fundamental principles that were
common to the later period.

Histories of philosophy are in most respects a more
recent development than that of cultural or of art history.
All three fields have matured as they have grown older and
it is reasonable to expect the most youthful of these
fields to have the furthest to go before it reaches full
maturation. If the writing of historians of medieval
philos0phy is not as yet fully mature, it is largely
because those who have been studying the subject have
occupied much of their time with justifying the very en-
deavor they have undertaken. In their opinion it has
been necessary to justify not only the application of the
term philosophy to medieval thought, but also vindicate
each medieval thinker as a legitimate philosopher. Evi-
dentaly considerable time is required before the historians
of philosophy are satisfied with the justifications members

of their profession have offered.

CONCLUSION

Before mention can be made of the conclusions that
can be drawn from the discussion presented above it seems
wise to review the major points raised in the first five

chapters. It was noted in the first chapter that the

attitudes of intellectuals from the Renaissance to the
mid-nineteenth century were formed by a continuous reaction
to what they viewed as medieval. Historians during these
centuries tended to reject not only the ideas and insti-
tutions that they associated with the Middle Ages, they were
opposed to the very idea of studying medieval history or
culture.

With the nineteenth century a reaction against the
rationalism of the previous century produced a movement
called romanticism. In response to the repudiation by the
romantics of the internationalism of the Napoleonic system,
a strong sense of national fervor can be found in the his-
torians of the nineteenth century. In addition to their
nationalism, nineteenth century historians adopted after
the Revolutions of 1848 a position that can be identified
as positivism. Positivism tended to support the romantic
contention that the Middle Ages were indeed worthy of study.

Following World War I the nationalism that had been
associated with positivism no longer appealed to historians,
who were otherwise prepared to accept many of the conclusions

the positive historians had drawn with respect to the early

193

Middle Ages. In particular historians of the twentieth
century have held the view that the early Middle Ages did
not begin with the sudden collapse of the Roman Empire. At
first, dismissal of the cataclysmic interpretation of early
medieval beginnings involved only the adoption of a tran-
sitional thesis in its place, retaining the catastrophic
view of early medieval culture that was normally associated
with the older interpretation.

Historians of the 1930's generally held the use of
transition to the strict definition that dictated that no
judgments be passed upon the cultural level of the early
Middle Ages. They also sought to describe the six centuries
beginning with the fourth as transitional, and some thought
the period of transition extended to the eleventh century.

Since the beginning of the second World War, his-
torians have wanted to limit the concept of transition to
the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, reserving the seventh
and following centuries for the expression "early Middle Ages".
They wished to represent early Middle Ages as a period
characterized by a new culture distinct from that of the
period of transition which preceded it and from the Middle
Ages which followed. The culture of the "early Middle Ages"
was viewed by this group as an improvement upon that of the
transitional age and of its predecessor, the culture of
the Empire.

From the exploration of early medieval historiography

presented in the above chapters certain conclusions can be

drawn.

194

1) Over the past seven centuries those historians
that have presented views of medieval or early medieval
history and culture can be broken down into "generations"
that lived about the same time and exhibit a common "atti-
tude". For example, we can legitimately speak of the
Renaissance 'humanist' as belonging to the fifteenth century
and as holding an "attitude" towards the Middle Ages that
was in most respects like that of others who lived in the
fifteenth century. But when we label Gibbon as a 'humanist'
we refer to those thoughts that Gibbon expressed that are
like those of the humanists and not germane to the eighteenth
century in which he wrote. That Gibbon sometimes resembled
the humanists indicates that thoughts of one generation can
be often found in another, but this does not mean the two
are not in some ways distinct. The historians of the
eighteenth century entertained many attitudes towards
history and towards the culture of the Middle Ages that
are not found in the fifteenth century or the nineteenth
century.

2) Although historians before the nineteenth century.
had a dismal view of the Middle Ages, they did prepare his-
tories of the Middle Ages. In most cases these histories
were factually scimpy and would hardly meet the demands of
modern scholarship, but they were nonetheless the "accepted"
histories of the Middle Ages at the time in which they were
written. Medieval scholarship has vastly improved since

Gibbon wrote in 1770. Technology has provided the historian
with important aids for studying the more distant past.

195

Detailed research has made single designations such as

"gothic", "medieval" or "dark" inadequate representations
of the thousand or so years following Rome's fabled: fall.
Since Voltaire first studied the culture of the France of
Louis XIV historians have found cultural history a major
sphere of activity. Toynbee has for example compared
several cultures with very profitable results and a number
of historians have viewed early medieval history as a study
in culture. A number of intellectual histories written
since the latter part of the nineteenth century have pro-
vided important insights into the thought of early medieval
men. Momentous as these gains have been one cannot help
but be impressed with their comparative youthfulness and
particularly that such innovations have only recently been
applied to the early medieval period. If an analogy is
permissible here, it would seem that cultural and intel-
lectual histories of the early middle ages are in the
spring of their career and full of fresh promises for the
future. There is little evidence to support those who
might think of historical studies, at least within the
narrow confines to which this thesis has limited itself,
as irrelevant quibblings. On the contrary it would seem
historians are near the threshold that will lead to a
mature understanding of the early Middle Ages, an under-
standing to which past efforts have contributed, but were

for various reasons incapable of achieving.

196

3) The point at which historians now stand with respect
to the early Middle Ages can be discovered only after a reading
of several recent studies upon the subject and a compariSon of
the apparently varied treatments they give. Within the scope
of early medieval history fall the first thousand years of the
Christian era. Within that thousand years a number of insti-
tutions came and then disappeared. Historians have sought
to find in the changing nature of institutions indications
of changes within the constitution of Western civilization
during that millennium. For the first three centuries of
the Christian era the Roman Empire has stood and will no
doubt continue to stand as the single most representative
institution. Among the historians considered within this
essay Cochrane provides the most intense and penetrating
analysis of the Roman Empire.

Unable to find one particular institution to represent
the character of the fourth through sixth centuries, his-
torians have tried a variety of labels such as "the later
Empire", "the Patristic Age" and "the period of invasions".

In the past forty years the'term "transition" has been used
to indicate the absence of a distinguishing institution or
institutions during this period. Hence Bark insists that
it is necessary to use the concept "transitional" as the
one best label for the years 300 to 600.

Even greater difficulty has arisen in finding some
appropriate signification that would apply to the seventh

and later centuries. Rejection of the "Dark Ages" concept

197

may be the single point upon which all rtwentieth century
writers could agree. Bark and Leclercq have in the last
ten years found a possible solution to the difficulty.
Both would insist that with the seventh century, the early
Middle Ages can truly be said to have existed. This claim
again admits a failure to find within a single institution
the essence of an age. When Bark and Leclercq use the
expression "early Middle Ages" they are describing what
they think was an unique culture. Leclercq would go so
far as to call this culture "monastic". Both would dis-
tinguish the institutions and thought of this culture

from those that characterize the transitional culture

that preceded it.

Finding an end for the early Middle Ages has from
the outset been fairly easy for historians. The intensi-
fication of intellectual and economic activity in the late
eleventh and early twelfth centuries has as a matter of
practice been presumed as the termination of thelearlyimedi-
eval epoch.

As the contemporary historian views the first thousand
years of Christianity, three periods emerge, each of funda-
mental singularity and of individual importance. From
Augustus to the Peace of the Church there existed the Roman
Empire, then a transitional period during which institutions
cannot with precision be defined lasting until the early
seventh century when the early Middle Ages are clearly
visible. Each period has been carefully researched by his-

torians whose common goal is a better comprehension of

198

early medieval culture. Cochrane and Bury have explored

the Roman Empire, Lot, Rand, Laistner, Mc Giffert and

others the three centuries of transition and Bark, Leclercq,
Dawson, Schnfirer and many others the early Middle Ages.
Historians of several generations can be mixed together
because each offers to future generations impressions of
the past that continue to have value.

4) With respect to the thought and culture of the
early Middle Ages historians of this century have expressed
at least three views. Reflecting a dependence upon earlier
attitudes towards the seventh and succeeding centuries a
number of historians have characterized these centuries
as nearly Void of intellectual life and without cultural
growth. Those of this view associate the absence of
classical letters following the collapse of the Empire
with the catastrophic nature of the early medieval period.

A second position ascribed to the early Middle Ages
a transitional status, which was taken by those who held
the position to mean a rather continuous alteration of
culture. Thus estimates of the quality of the culture
were meaningless. They reasoned the constant changes in
the mixture of classical and medieval institutions during
the seventh through tenth centuries defies simple charac-
terization and classification.

The third and more recent view agrees that tran-
sitional eras do: not lend themselves to meaningful

appraisal of their cultural or intellectual life. They

199

who hold to this third view would not describe the early
Middle Ages as transitional, however. The early medieval
period possessed a culture of well-defined constitution.
It was the first expression of the Christian solution to
social relationships and intellectually rested upon princi-
ples visible throughout the Middle Ages and into modern
times. As such it was a departure from the ill-defined
transitional period that immediately preceded it, and a
major improvement upon the classical culture that mediately
preceded it. Its intellectual life may have been immature,
but it was not visibly interior to that of other epochs,
and considering the purpose for which most of it was
intended, the contemplation of God, it may have been
unusually accomplished.

The last two chapters of this thesis were devoted to
a brief survey of the literature by specialists interested
in the art and philosophy of the early Middle Ages. As
the survey indicated, the literature of the specialists
in most cases was not very satisfactory. This should not
be taken to mean there is nothing to be learned from
specialists in early medieval art or philosophy, or for
that matter literature, theology, education and other
branches of cultural and intellectual history. As would
be expected specialists provide far more information related
to their subject than the general cultural historian who
has but a few pages to spend on early medieval art or

philosophy. But the specialists appear lacking.

I‘

200

Explanation of why this is so will give rise to certain
other conclusions.

1) Historians of art and of philosophy have yet to
produce a synthesis devoted to the early Middle Ages that
is comprehensive within the historians' field. Since
numerous books on medieval art and philos0phy are currently
available this would seem a pertinent stricture. Good
histories of early Christian art, of Germanic art of
medieval art exist, if not abundantly, but none of early

1 In philosophy there is, with one notable

medieval art.
exception, nothing but general histories of medieval
- philosophy, and that one exception, the works of Harry
Wolfson, holds more in the way of promise than actual
accomplishment. This situation is in itself somewhat
unsettling, but some of the explanations for why it exists
are more bothersome.

2) It is reasonable to expect the historians of
art and of philosophy should reflect the same attitudes
evidenced within the more general histories of their
"generations". That this is not the case raises the same
question asked in the above paragraph, why?

Presence of a time lapse that might involve years

in the exchange of ideas seems quite natural, but it does

not follow that a greater lapse of time between the

 

,lJohn Beckwith has a book by the title Early Medieval
Art, however, he limits his discussion to the "Romanesque
art of the ninth and later centuries. . .

2C1

exchanges of the historian of art and those of culture
should exist than are present among historians of culture
alone. Yet this seems to be the case. As Dawson, Lot,
Moss, Bark and Pirenne demonstrate a cultural historian
depends upon the specialist for much of his information
about art. The exchange is for the most part only a one-
way process, however. A simple explanation would be the
historian of art or of philosophy does not need to learn
from the cultural historian. "That this is not the case

is proven by the absence of histories of early medieval
art and philosophy, and by Coulton's profitable venture
into the history of medieval thought. A better expla-
nation is the historiansof art and philosophy believe

they do not need to learn from the historians of the early
Middle Ages. This explanation fails to completely satisfy
us for it does not tell us why.

3) As the surveys given in chapters six and seven
of this thesis indicate students of art and of philosophy
are not convinced the terms "early medieval" have meaning
within their fields of inquiry. Satisfied that art can
be broken down into Christian and barbarian until
Romanesque art began to flourish under Charlemagne,
historians have oriented their histories about those
three types of art. Efforts have been made to connect
Christian art with that of the barbarians, but such
efforts are still controversial. The seventy-five years

in which historians have critically examined post-

202

classical art suggest that with additional investigation
the barriers to the study of early medieval art will break
down. Eduard Syndicus writing in the past five years
gives an example of what might be done on a greater scale.
He provides within a history of early Christian art a
chapter on barbarian art and another on how both con-
tributed to Romanesque art.

Historians of philosophy have given considerable
attention to the many medieval philosophers. Unfortunately
this has led them to think of post-classical philos0phy in
terms of medieval philosophy alone. The philosophers of
the fourth through tenth centuries, when thought of at
all, are considered transmitters or precursors, both
terms implying a second-class citizenship. Thus the
historians continue to devote their major attention to
a period that comes later than that with which we are
concerned here. Little wonder that Gilson, De Wulf or
Maurer do not find early medieval history fruitful grounds
for the research in which they are interested.

4) Two solutions to the dilemma that entangles
early medieval philosophy might be proferred. One would
be to attempt to dispel the image of medieval philos0phy
as exclusively scholastic or scientific, and give to it
a broader definition, perhaps along the lines suggested
by Wolfson, that would encompass early medieval philos0phy
as within the prOper domain of historical studies of
medieval philosophy. The other solution would be to

20}

inspire historians to approach early medieval philosophy as
a field of specialization. In either case the gap that
presently exists could eventually be closed.

Certain questions are raised in this discussion that
are left unanswered by the authorities on early medieval
culture. To what extent and in what manner did the Islamic
and Byzantine civilizations affect the culture of the west
during the early Middle Ages? What in detail was the
nature of western culture during the seventh and eighth
centuries? Is it appropriate to assess the intellectual
and cultural level of a civilization that is just beginning
against some fixed standard? If so, what is the standard
against which they may be measured?

If this thesis, which is already quite long, should
allow for greater expansion, there are three directions
this expansion should follow. The philosophers of history

that are presently offered as a backdrop for purposes of

comparison ought be given greater attention particularly
within the twentieth century. The several French and
German histories of early medieval culture that are as
yet untranslated into English should be given hearing.
Lastly a comparison of specialists in early medieval
literature, theology, education, music and drama could
be added as chapters in the manner art and philosophy

have been approached.

APPENDIX

The following is a comparative chart to give the reader

a perhaps clearer picture of when the general cultural

historians of this century wrote and what country they

were native of.

Author

Bury

D111

Sandys

Ker

Taylor

Lot

Pirenne

Schnurer

Rand

Laistner

Dawson

McGiffert

Moss

Date of

1889

1898

1903

1904

1911

1921

1925

1926

1928

1931

1932

1933

1935

Publication

& 1926

& 1936*

& 1957

etc.

Year Died

 

1926

1924

1922

1923

1941

1952

1935

1941

1945

1933

Country

Eng.

Eng.

French

Belg.

Germ.

Eng.

Am.

Eng.

Chapter

II

II

II

II

II

III

III

IV

III

IV

IV

III

IV

Author

Pickman

Duckett

Toynbee

Cochrane

Burns

Wallace-
Hadrill

Artz

Leclercq

Bark

Décarreaux

Halecki

Daly

Date of Year Died

 

Publication

 

1937

1938 & 1959

1939 etc.

1940 1946

1948 1941

1952

1953

1957*

1958

1960*

1963

1965

* notes date of first French edition

Country

Eng.

Eng.

Eng.

Eng.

French

Polish

Am.

205

Chapter

III

III

IV

IV

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Historical reading, by popular hearsay, is a vertible
desert of dusty prose. In all honesty much of it ‘13: the
student of history must be prepared for long journeys with-
out a single refreshing sentence; it takes the endurance
of an ox and the patience of a saintly monk to finish some

of the great texts. But not all history falls into this

category. There is much that is alive, provocative and

stimulating even to the novice, and there is much more that

is sufficiently interesting, persuasive or important to

warrant a certain amount of heavy going. Such anathe books
recommended here.

The reader may want to begin with a history of his-
torical writing that parallels the scope of this one, but
in greater detail and with more attention to the full
range of historical ideas. The standard Harry Elmer Barnes,
AgHistory of Historical Writing (Norman, 1938; Dover Publi-
cations, 1963), or the more recent Page Smith, The Historian

and History (New York, 1964), are both thorough and full of

 

interesting sidelights.

.Once the reader is confident he has within his grasp
the essential historiographical background he may be wise
to turn to the philOSOphy behind historical writing. A
good place to start is with the collection of excerpts
from contemporary and influential philosophers of history

edited by Hans Meyerhoff, The Philosophy of History in our

207

Tip; (New York, 1959; Doubleday Anchor, 1963), which includes
a useful introduction to each of the selections. Also basic
introductory material is offered by Edward Hallett Carr,
What is History (New York, 1961); A. L. Rowse, The Use of
History (New York, 1946; Collier Books, 1963); and W. H.
Walsh, Philosophy of History: ,An Introduction (London, 1951;
Harper Torchbooks, 1960). Each of these have the advantage of
brevity and readibility in addition to being distinguished
texts.

For those readers who wish to skip the precursory for
the genuine raw materials of philosophy of history one
might turn to Wilhelm Dilthey, ggttern and Meaning in History
(London, 1961; Harper Torchbooks, 1962); Jose Ortega y Gasset,
_History as a System and others Essays (New York, 1941);
Norton Library, 1962); Christopher Dawson, The Dynamics of
World History (New York,l956; Mentor, 1962); Robin George
Collingwood, The Idea of History (London, 1946; Galaxy
Books, 1961); and Jacob Burckhardt, Force and Freedom:
Reflections on Histopy (New York, 1953). Each of the above
are collected works by the respective philos0phers, and
edited to represent the vital variety of historical thought
in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

It is not necessary for the reader to have read all
of the above materials before he begins to study the origins
of modern historical writing, however. A comparison of the
attitudes of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance towards
historical material is offered by R. R. Bolgar, Th;

I,

208

Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries from the Carolingian
Age to the End of the Renaissance (London, 1954; Harper
Tonhbooks, 1964). The problem of the transition from the
Middle Ages to the Renaissance has been fascinatingly dealt
with in Johann Huizinga, The Waning o; the MiddlegAgps (New
York, 1954; Doubleday Anchor, 1958). It is Huizinga's
contention the Renaissance was the product of the collapse
(of European solidarity. Jacob Burckhardt, the recognized
authority on the Renaissance itself, envisioned its oc-
curence as an event somewhat unique in historical annals.
Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
(3rd ed.; New York, 1929; Harper Torchbooks, 1958), should
be read in conjunction with Huizinga's study.

For the intellectual currents existing during the
Renaissance a very useful book is Paul Oskar Kristeller,
Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanistic
Strains (Cambridge, 1955; Harper Torchbooks, 1961). Docu-
mentation for his analysis is offered in another valuable
publication which he helped to edit with Ernest Cassirer
and John Herman Randall, Jr., The Renaissance Philosophy of
Mpg (Chicago, 1948; Phoenix Books, 1965).

Only two of the many studies on Machiaevelli need be
mentioned here. J. H. Whitfield, Machiaevelli (New York,
1947), offers a good account of the man and the significance
of his thought. Herbert Butterfield, The Statecraft of
Machiaevelli (New York, 1940), includes within a brilliant

 

assessment of Machiaevelli's place in.the history of

209

historical and political thought, extended excerpts from

The Prince and its companion work The Discourses.

 

Little has been done in way of the historiography of
the Reformation aside from rather technical accounts within
certain historical journals. Estimates of the conclusions
these accounts make are provided in Herbert Butterfield,
Christianity and History (New York, 1950). Historical
surveys of the Reformation era are competently provided

by Roland H. Bainton, The Reformgpgpn ofyjhp Sixgpenth

 

Century (Boston, 1951; Beacon, 1962); and E. H. Harbison,
1mp_Age of the Reformation (Ithaca, 1955; Cornell, 1962).
(New York, 1911), gives a most helpful interpretation of
the changes the Reformation forced upon Christian thought.
Initiating the "Age of Reason" was a revolution in
manner by which men conceived the world in which he lived.
Describing the role of one individual who was among the
first to express the new vision that remade the cosmology
of men, Giorgio de Santillana, ghe Crime of Galileo
(Chicago, 1955; Time Inc. Books, 1962), is most successful
in giving an insight into intellectual life of both the
Reformation and the -Enlightenment. A brief but immensely
important survey of the scientific revolution is provided
by Alfred North Whitehead, Spienpe and the Modern woggg
(New York, 1925; Mentor, 1960). For an extremely readable
guide to the thought of the Enlightenment refer to Frank E.

Manuel, The Ag§_g§;§@§§9p_ (Ithaca, 1951; Cornell, 1965).

210

A number of good studies of the historiography of the
eighteenth century are available. L. M. Angus-Butterworth,
Ten Master Historians (Aberdeen, 1962); and J. B. Black,

The Art of Histpry (New York, 1926), are particularly strong
on Edward Gibbon. Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of 3h;
Eighteenth-Century Philos0phers (New Haven, 1932; Yale
University, 1963), offers many inspired observations about
the historians of the era. No historiographical study of
the nineteenth century excells that of George Peabody Gooch,
Igigtory and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (2nd ed.:
London, 1952; Beacon, 1959), for completeness of scope nor
fairness of judgment.

A number of historians have been discussed at length
in the text above, and hence extended comment here is not

necessary. For Edward Gibbon's classic work on the Roman

Empire, the John Bagnell Bury edition, Edward Gibbon, Th3
Degling and Fall of the Roman Empirp (7 vols.: London,
1897), is the most complete. Jules Michelet, History of
France (1? vols. 2nd ed.: Paris, 1835-67), stands forth
as one of the most intelligible of the nineteenth century
romantic historians. Representative of the achievements

of Catholic historians in the nineteenth century is Count de

Romanticism can be found in the works of predominantly
positive histories as Charles Kingsley, The Rpmgpggpd_§hp

Teutpp (London, 1964), illustrates when he magnifies the

211

virtues of the Teuton. The late nineteenth century attraction
for the "germ theory" is exampled by the works of Fustel de
Coulanges. For example see Numa Fustel de Coulanges,
L'Invasiongermapique et la fin de 1’Empire (Paris, 1891).
There existed towards the end of the nineteenth century
an interest in the later Empire that produced several very
notable studies. Those by John Bagnell Bury and Sir Samuel
Dill are outstanding. The reader may wish to refer to Bury,
_History of the Later Roman Empirer_§rom the Degph_g§
Ihggdogius I to the Death of Juspgnian (525-565) (2 vols.:
London, 1889). or to Dill, _Rgggrjppiety gr the Last Cepppry
of the prtgrn Empire (2nd. ed.: London, 1898), and Dill,
Romap Society in Gaul in thp_M§rovingiar.Ag§ (London, 1926).
Histories of literature transcend the normal bounds of
cultural history and in truth belong to a group of special
studies. John E. sandys, History of Classical Schplarshgp
(3 vols. 3rd ed.: New York, 1958), concentrates upon Latin
and Greek literature. Pierre C. de Labriolle, Héstory and
.Lirerature of Christiapgty frog-Tertullian to Boethius (New
York, 1925), stresses early Christian literature. William
Paton Ker, The Dark Agps (London, 1903), relates Germanic
letters to those in medieval Latin. Henry Osborn Taylor
is also concerned with medieval literature, but his most
important work attempts to relate the several sources of
medieval thought. Taylor, The Medieval MingJ_A;§;§30ry of
the Developmen§_pf Thought and Emotion in the Middlpypgpp

(2 vols., 4th ed., New York, 1925), is a pioneering study
into the intellectual history of the Middle Ages.

212

Two of the most influential historians of the early
Middle Ages in this century have been Ferdinand Lot and
Henri Pirenne. Lot, The End of the AnCienpgfipgggfigng_lpg
Beginnings of the Middle Ages (New York, 1931; Harper
Torchbooks, l96l),views the third through the fifth
centuries to have been marked by the transition from the
ancient to the medieval world, but he believes the con-
sequences after the fifth century to have been catastrophic.
Pirenne, Medieval Citi§§ (Princeton, 1925; Doubleday Anchor,
1963); and Mohammed and Charlemagne (New York, 1939;
Meridian Books, 1960), argues that the Empire continued
without interruption until the end of the seventh century.

Several writers have insisted the transition to the
Middle Ages took place during the Patristic Age, and assume
as did Lot the following centuries were dismal culturally.
Edward Kennard Rand,_Founders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge,
1928; Dover Publications, 1957); Arthur Cushman Mc Giffert,
.History of Chriptian Thought (New York, 1937); Edward Motley
Pickman, The Mind of Latin Christendom (New York, 1938); and
Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Gateway to the Middle Ages (New
York, 1938; Ann Arbor, 1963), may be read as representative
of those expressing this persuasion.

Other historians believe the Middle Ages to have begun
in the late eighth and early ninth centuries or later and
view the preceding centuries as transitional. Gustav
Schnurer, Church and Culture in the Middle Agpg (3 vols.:
Patterson, New Jersey, 1956), describes the role of the

213

Church in this transition. Christopher Dawson, The Making

of Europe (New York, 1932; Meridian, 1963); and_flnderstandigg

 

Europe (New York, 1952; Doubleday Image, 1960), asserts the
Christian Middle Ages to have been the accomplishment about
Which history of the West is centered.

J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West (London, 1952;
Harper Torchbooks, 1962), and The Long:Hair§d Kings (New York,
1962); Max L. W. Laistner, Intellectual Heritage of the Early
Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1957), and Thought and Letters in

 

Western Europe: A. D.,500-999 (2nd. ed.: Ithaca, 1957);

H. St. L. B. Moss, The Birth of the Early Middle Ages 395-
814 (London, 1935; Oxford University, 1963); and Frederick B.
Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages: A. D. 200-1500 (3rd. ed.:
New York, 1954), give minimal emphasis to the part the
Church played, but all nonetheless insist the fundamental
feature of the early Middle Ages was its transitional
character.

Many of the most important interpretations of early
medieval culture in recent years have been the result of
investigations into how cultures are produced when civili-
zations come into contact with one another. Arnold Toynbee
is best known among the historians making such investigations.
His thesis can be found inIA Study of History (12 vols.;
London and New York, 1939-1961), and in his shorter
Civilization on Trial and the World and the West (London,
1948-1953; Meridian Books, 1959), or the abridged version
of his A Study of History by D. C. Somervell (New York,
1956-57).

 

214

Other works of shorter nature but of similar importance
are those by C. Delisle Burns, The First Europe (New York,
1948), and Oscar Halecki, The Millennium of EurOpe (South

 

Bend, Ind., 1963). Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity
and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought andrAgpion from
Augustus to Augustine (Cambridge, 1940; Galaxy Books, 1957),
finds in the confrontation of classicism and Christianity
the former gave way, but not before it altered Christianity
into its medieval nature.

From the studies of encounters between different
cultures opinion has arisen that early medieval culture
. was the unique product of one such encounter. William
Carroll Bark, Origins of the Medieval World (San Francisco,
1958; Anchor Books, 1963); and Jean Leclercq, The Love of
Learning and the Desire for God (New York, 1960, Mentor,
1962), explain how this was possible and the nature of the
new culture. Additional reference with respect to this

position might be made to Lowrie J. Daly, Benedictine
Monasticism: Its Formation and Development Through? the

12th Century (New York, 1965); and Jean Décarreaux, Monks

 

and Civilization from the Barbarian Invasions to the Reign
of Charlemagne (London, 1964).

Specialized studies of ancient and medieval art are
fairly abundant. Early histories on this subject such as
those of Franz von Reber, History of Mediaeval Art (New
York, 1887); W. R. Lethaby, Mediaeval Art (London, 1904);
Margaret A. Bulley, Ancient and Medieval Art: A Short

 

r‘

215

History (London, 1914); and Henry B. Cotterill, A History 3;

 

Art (New York, 1922), are no longer considered as comprehensive
treatments, but they do provide valuable backgrounds for later
and more complete histories. The most adequate of more
recent histories are offered by Ernst Kitzinger, Egrly
Medieval Art in the British Museum (London, 1940), and
Charles Rufus Morey, Mediaeval Art (New York, 1942).

Several provocative studies on the history of Germanic
Art have appeared since Josef Strzygowski, Origin of
Christian Church Art (Oxford, 1923), and Early Church_Art
in Northern Europe (London, 1928), first wrote his two

classics on the subject. Haakon Shetelig, Préhistoire de

la Norvége (Oslo, 1926); and Harold Picton, Early Ggrpgp

 

Art and its Origins (London, 1939). support the views of

 

Strzygowski. Challenging the position Strzygowski represents
are Wilhelm Holmqvist, Germanic Art During the First
Millennium A. D. (Stockholm, 1955); Marvin C. Ross and
Philippe Verdier, Arts of the Migration Period in the Walters
Ar3_§gllery (Baltimore, 1961); and Haakon Shetelig in his
latest book, Classical Impulses in Scandanavian Art (Cambridge,
1949).

Of the recent histories of medieval art the interpre-
tations presented by Andre Graber and Carl Nordenfalk, Egply
Medieval Painting from the Fourth to the Eleventh_C§p§pry
(New York, 1957), are worth contrasting with two outstanding

studies of early Christian art. D. Talbot Rice, The

Beginnings of Christian Art (New York, 1957), recalls

216

the arguments of Morey, whereas Eduard Syndicus, Early
Christian Art (New York, 1962), attempts a rather novel and

 

very rewarding approach to his subject.

Early medieval philosophy has never satisfactorily
been investigated in English. When discussed at all, it
has most often served as introductory material for a
competent history of medieval philosophy. To find what
is available one must be prepared to look at several histo-
ries, each of which are incomplete in themselves. A good
beginning is the introductory chapter by Reginald Lane
Poole for his Illustrations of the History of Medieval
Thought and Learning (2nd ed.; London, 1920). The classic

 

text for the history of medieval philosophy and valuable
for its few pages on early medieval philosophy is Wilhelm
Windelband, AgHistory of Philosophy (New York, 1901;
Harper Torchbooks, 1958). Maurice De Wulf, gipjpryypg
hrdiaeval Philosophy (6th ed.; New York, 1952), concen-
trates upon the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages,
but thoughtfully includes a thumbnail sketch of early
medieval philosophy.

It is generally agreed that Etienne Gilson has written
the standard histories of medieval philos0phy. Of these
two stand out, ghp_§pirgt of Medieval Philosophy (New York,
1936), and A Histpry of Christianghilosophy in the Middlg
Aggg (New York,l955). A number of shorter histories have
been written that follow in most cases the posture Gilson

maintains. S. J. Curtis, A Short History of Western

217

Philosophy-ip_the Middle Ages (London, 1950); Gordon Leff,
Mpfiieygl_$hpught from Saint Augustine to Ockham (Penguin
Books, 1958); Armand A. Maurer, Medieval Philosophy (New
York, 1962); David Knowles, The Evolution of Medigypl

 

Thought (Baltimore, 1962); and Julius R. Weinberg, A Short
History of Medieval Philosophy (Princeton, 1964), all give
rather cursory attention to medieval philosophy before the
eleventh century.

Anne Fremantle, The Ag; of’gelier (New York, 1954;
Mentor, 1961), like David McKeon and Hermann Shapiro, edits
selections from several medieval philosophers, and provides
them with introductory commentary. A remarkable little
book for its singular attempt to relate medieval philosophy
with medieval culture is provided by G. G. Coulton, giggigg

in Meggpvgl Thought (London, 1940). In the second volume

.-

 

of A History pf Philpgpphy by Frederick Copleston,

 

Mgdiaeval_fhilosophy,(Westminster, Md., 1950; Doubleday
Image, 1962), there are several good chapters on early
medieval philosophers although the balk of his attention
is given to Augustine.

A fresh positive and promising of great reward is a
series of studies relating to medieval philosophy by
Harry A. Wolfson under the general title Strpctpre ahd

Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plpto to Spippgg. In

 

the second volume of this series, Philo: Foundgpippp of

 

Religiop§-3hilosophy_in Judaismj Christignijy, gpgygglgp
(Cambridge, 1947-1948), Wolfson puts forth his main thesis

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218

in a very convincing manner. He restates this position in

Religious Phglpppphy£._A.Gr9up of Essays (Ithaca, 1947;

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Atheneum, 1965).

   

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