I like the Middle Ages. They’re the underdog of History, and for that miraculously unspoiled by pop culture. But more than that, they’re the beginning of what could have been.
The Middle Ages were called “Middle” before they were in between anything. In 1469, when the name first appears, there was still no Renaissance for the Middle Ages to be in between it and Antiquity. The only thing the *Middle Ages* were in between of, was the desire of the “Renaissance” men to see themselves as the heirs of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Nomen est omen…
The slanderous renaissants conquered the Middle Ages, not unlike they conquered the Americas around the same time: not just in flesh and blood but also in memory and soul. It’s easy to see how, with Man at the center of the Universe, the renaissants grew to despise the understated Middle Ages. There’s never mercy when grandiloquence meets sobriety.
Medieval people were by no means extraordinary. They imposed upon themselves the same evils that their predecessors and successors did (and we may always do): they warred, persecuted minorities and separated the rich from the poor. There was just one difference between medieval people and the renaissants in this respect: medieval people never claimed to be doing this in the name of “civilizing Man”. On the other hand, paradoxically, the renaissants managed to get away with this claim in spite of the Spanish, Portuguese and Roman inquisitions, the Protestant Reformations and their subsequent wars, and the witch hunts (yes, all these happened in the Renaissance, and well into it). Maybe the medievals would have been luckier if they had tried writing treaties about how their enemies had no souls.
If I had to choose one word to describe the Middle Ages, that word would be “unassuming”. While the renaissants were full of certitude about their own and the others’ souls (or the lack thereof), medievals were more careful, tentative. Despite the popular notion that the Church crushed any secular thinking, the Middle Ages witnessed the separation of Church and State in the Magna Carta, the signature of the Concordat of Worms which for the first move against the divine right of kings, and the birth of the Scientific Method. Scholasticism flourished as Medieval people tried to understand life and its contradictions, the world of Faith (the ideal) and the World around them (the real). Medievals were people of dialectics, not of rhetoric.
The Medieval world produced an amazing number of inventions, but these were, as it corresponds to their times, sublime only in practicality. To Medieval people we owe: the button, eye glasses, the heavy plough, the wine press and later the printing press, the horse collar, spurs, mechanical clocks, the blast furnace, mirrors, windmills and soap, they discovered that infectious diseases spread by human contact and invented quarantine, they adopted Arabic numerals and created universities, among other things.
The world of the Middle Ages, as imperfect as it may have been, grossly mocked by the savage “Truth” of the Humanists (with their most restrictive idea of what Human ever was), was a world of harmonization, a world of philological caution and conviviality. A world of buttons, wine presses, eye glasses and heavy ploughs. A world of inventions to the measure of Man, not of Man measured by his inventions.
I like the Middle Ages. They’re the underdog of History, and for that miraculously unspoiled by pop culture. But more than that, they’re the beginning of what could have been.
The Middle Ages were called “Middle” before they were in between anything. In 1469, when the name first appears, there was still no Renaissance for the Middle Ages to be in between it and Antiquity. The only thing the *Middle Ages* were in between of, was the desire of the “Renaissance” men to see themselves as the heirs of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Nomen est omen…
The slanderous renaissants conquered the Middle Ages, not unlike they conquered the Americas around the same time: not just in flesh and blood but also in memory and soul. It’s easy to see how, with Man at the center of the Universe, the renaissants grew to despise the understated Middle Ages. There’s never mercy when grandiloquence meets sobriety.
Medieval people were by no means extraordinary. They imposed upon themselves the same evils that their predecessors and successors did (and we may always do): they warred, persecuted minorities and separated the rich from the poor. There was just one difference between medieval people and the renaissants in this respect: medieval people never claimed to be doing this in the name of “civilizing Man”. On the other hand, paradoxically, the renaissants managed to get away with this claim in spite of the Spanish, Portuguese and Roman inquisitions, the Protestant Reformations and their subsequent wars, and the witch hunts (yes, all these happened in the Renaissance, and well into it). Maybe the medievals would have been luckier if they had tried writing treaties about how their enemies had no souls.
If I had to choose one word to describe the Middle Ages, that word would be “unassuming”. While the renaissants were full of certitude about their own and the others’ souls (or the lack thereof), medievals were more careful, tentative. Despite the popular notion that the Church crushed any secular thinking, the Middle Ages witnessed the separation of Church and State in the Magna Carta, the signature of the Concordat of Worms which for the first move against the divine right of kings, and the birth of the Scientific Method. Scholasticism flourished as Medieval people tried to understand life and its contradictions, the world of Faith (the ideal) and the World around them (the real). Medievals were people of dialectics, not of rhetoric.
The Medieval world produced an amazing number of inventions, but these were, as it corresponds to their times, sublime only in practicality. To Medieval people we owe: the button, eye glasses, the heavy plough, the wine press and later the printing press, the horse collar, spurs, mechanical clocks, the blast furnace, mirrors, windmills and soap, they discovered that infectious diseases spread by human contact and invented quarantine, they adopted Arabic numerals and created universities, among other things.
The world of the Middle Ages, as imperfect as it may have been, grossly mocked by the savage “Truth” of the Humanists (with their most restrictive idea of what Human ever was), was a world of harmonization, a world of philological caution and conviviality. A world of buttons, wine presses, eye glasses and heavy ploughs. A world of inventions to the measure of Man, not of Man measured by his inventions.
Posted 1 year ago
