Medieval Worldview

In historical terms, the Middle Ages was so named because it lies midway between the Ancient Times and the Modern Age. It begins in the 5th century, with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and ends in the 15th century, with the Renaissance transition to the Modern Age. These ten centuries of history of Western civilization are usually divided into two periods: the High Middle Ages, from the 5th to the 10th century, and the Late Middle Ages, from the 10th to the 15th century.

Causes of Medieval Cultural Regression
There are those who tendentiously blame the Church for the fact that the Middle Ages was a cultural regression. It is true that the Church filtered out of the Greco-Roman culture only what was of interest to it, but it also kept much of this culture; if this had not been the case, it would not have preserved the ancient manuscripts, which would have made Renaissance impossible.  

For those who are not tendentious or biased, the main factor that plunged Europe into a limbo or a thousand-year dream was the takeover of power by the barbarians, who were more than 2,000 years behind the Greco-Roman culture. This is certainly the main factor, but there are others that contributed to or accentuated the Dark Ages.

Europe lived during the Middle Ages in a climate of constant instability. Culture does not grow in times of war. The Pax Romana had provided for cultural development; but now, the isolation, the lack of trade and communications that feudalism caused transformed the urban world and its culture into a rural and closed world where agriculture was the only activity, and the constant wars between small kingdoms and, within these kingdoms, between the feudal lords did not provide for a cultural development.

While inside Europe, the Church was dedicated to educating the barbarians, outside Europe, it was constantly threatened by other barbarians. On the western side, the Muslims, who had occupied all of North Africa, invaded the Iberian Peninsula and reached as far as the heart of France, to Poitiers, where they were defeated by Charles Martel. The Ottoman Empire threatened from the east to extend into Europe. To the north, the Vikings appeared, another Germanic tribe from Scandinavia that made quick incursions to the coasts of England and France, with the sole purpose of robbing, plundering, and killing.

These are all factors that made Europe, united under the Roman Empire, a bunch of estates or fiefdoms disconnected from each other, with the sole concern of survival. The Church or Christianity was present in all these states and in all of them, it was the only uniting factor. That is why ventures like the crusades were possible, because there was no other factor that could unite the peoples and make them leave their fiefdoms.

High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages is the time period furthest away from us and closest to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. During this period of barbarian occupation of the Roman Empire, the urban centers were destroyed, the people returned to the countryside. The barbarians formed small kingdoms using the structures of the Roman Empire.

In the 7th century, both North Africa and the Middle East became Muslim; the latter had been part of the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire (the longest empire in history). This Empire continued to exist for a while longer, until 1453, already in the Late Middle Ages, when it succumbed to the Ottoman Empire which in turn lasted another 600 years and ended sometimes after World War I, in 1922.

During the High Middle Ages, Christianity, which constituted itself as the heir to the Greco-Roman culture, spread throughout Europe and, as we saw in the previous text, the Germanic tribes were giving in to this religious narrative that was far superior to their own. When the chief of the tribe converted, the whole tribe converted, as a matter of loyalty, a very important value among the barbarians.

Still in the High Middle Ages, an attempt was made by the Franks during the Carolingian dynasty, to restore the old Roman Empire. The Carolingian Empire emerged in the 8th and 9th centuries by the unification of the Frankish and Germanic kingdoms during the Carolingian dynasty, which began with Charlemagne.

Later, this Empire split off from this division; the eastern part of France with the rest of Germania formed the Germanic Roman Empire during the reign of the Saxon dynasty, with Otto I as emperor. He was given the title of Holy Emperor by the Pope, which gave rise to the name Holy Germanic Roman Empire.

The Germanic emperors considered themselves direct successors of the Romans. These emperors were elected by a council of four dukes of the most important kingdoms: Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. The emperor represented the entire Empire, but each of the confederated kingdoms had autonomy over its own territory, which was governed according to the feudal system. This Empire lasted 900 years: from the High Middle Ages, through the Late Middle Ages and the Modern Period, into the Contemporary Age, ending in 1806 with the Napoleonic wars.

Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages began in the year 1000; during this period there was a great demographic growth, feudalism was the prevailing system throughout Europe; the king of each state was only a symbolic figure, he did not have great executive power. During this time, the Church established itself not only as a spiritual powerhouse, but also as a temporal one, as it managed to incite the feudal nobles to embark on a crusade to reconquer the Holy Land that the Byzantine Empire had lost to the Ottoman Empire.

They did conquer it, but for a short time, only to lose it once the Ottoman Empire reached its height. It will not be conquered again, not even by Richard the Lionheart, until World War I by the British. During the crusades, the Germanic tribes showed their barbaric side, so they did more harm than good. Failing to defeat the Muslims, in 1204 in the fourth crusade they turned against the Christians of the East, looting, terrorizing, and vandalizing Byzantium which, weakened, feel easy prey to the Ottoman power.

The last two centuries of the Late Middle Ages were marked by various wars, adversities, and catastrophes. The population was decimated by successive famines and plaques; the Black Death alone was responsible for the death of a third of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1350. There was also the Spiritual Black Death, with the Great Schism of the Church in the West, which had profound consequences on society and was one of the factors behind numerous wars between states.

Cultural life was dominated by scholasticism, a philosophy that sought to unite faith with reason, and by the founding of the first universities. The work of Thomas Aquinas, the masterpieces of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo and the construction of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals are among the most outstanding achievements of this period.

Feudalism
The barbarian invasion caused people to flee from the city to the countryside. Western Europe was becoming rural, and the wealth was land. Agriculture became the main economic activity, and the production of the fields  was for their own sustenance. Charlemagne promoted the distribution of land to feudal lords, demanding in exchange their allegiance and aid in event of war.

Feudalism is the term we use for every social, political, cultural, ideological, and economic organization that existed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Feudalism is the ruralization of urban Roman Europe; cities only came back into existence with the opening of trade in the Modern Period, around the time of the Renaissance.

The symbol of feudalism is the feudal lord’s castle, surrounded by farmland where the serfs, the people, work from sunrise to sunset, paying homage and vassalage to the feudal lord or liege lord, a member of the nobility. From one castle to the next, monastery after monastery were built where monks who constitute the other social class, the clergy, lived.

The nobles defend the fief because they own of the land that the people work; the clergy maintain the culture and teach both religion and agricultural techniques to the people, praying for them; the people support with their work both the nobles and the clergy, although the latter was largely self-sufficient. The Nobility (bellatores) defends, the Clergy (oratores) prays, and the People (laboratores) work: this sums up rural life during feudalism.

The Ideal of Chivalry
The medieval knight embodies values such as courage, prowess, unfailing loyalty, fidelity to his word, dignity, and honor. He usually defends the poorest and fights for justice and peace. He leads an errant life of solitude, because of the battles and skirmishes he faces. He is in love with a maiden with whom he has a platonic love relationship from a distance.

He must show temperance in battle, generosity towards both friends and enemies, and courtesy towards women. The liberality of the knight who redistributes all his possessions to people and the poor is part of his fame. The values celebrated by chivalry are the fruit of a long education.

The aspiring knight must serve his apprenticeship under a lord, first by being his servant and then his squire. He then learns both the handling of weapons and the ethics of chivalry. Once invested, he must demonstrate his worth by performing in tournaments or participating in the adventures that come his way. In the quest for glory and recognition, these errant knights will also undertake multiple quests, the most prestigious of which is that for the Holy Grail, that is, the chalice of the Jesus’ Last Supper as well as for the ark of the covenant.

The Templars
They were so called because they formed this religious military order in the temple of Jerusalem where they sought the Holy Grail. These and other members of religious military orders were the ones who best embodied the spirit of the knight, for by not marrying they devoted their entire lives to holy or just wars. They were the most feared by the Muslims because they were martyrs to the cause; in fact, when Muslims imprisoned a Templar, they were not content with just killing him as they did to any crusader, but tortured him for a long time before killing him.

The Templars grew in power and in wealth, and in France, they came to have more land, more power and wealth than the King of France himself, so the latter, together with the Pope, arranged for their dissolution. Before this happened, the armada of the Templars set sail from France and is said to have gone to Portugal, where King Denis, in a smart move, instead of dissolving the order that has been powerful in Portugal since its first king Afonso Henriques, he changed its name to Knights of the Order of Christ. The Portuguese Discoveries were made by the Templars, financed by the Jews. In fact, the Portuguese caravels carried the Templar’s square cross on their sails.

Eclesia mater ed magistra
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is the king," so says the people; the Church became a powerful and influential institution not only in religion but also in medieval society. The Germanic peoples were not at all interested in culture, they could not read or write, but they knew that formation and information represented power, so they recognized in the Church not only a religious power, but also a cultural one, as heir to Greco-Roman culture. Consequently, the Church was respected, even though, as Hitler later claimed, it had no armies to subdue the peoples.

The power of the Church was only spiritual. However, since the human being is a spiritual being, when you subdue a person’s soul, you subdue his body because the body obeys the dictates of the soul. We can see a picture of this submission in the following episode that is iconographic and representative of the Middle Ages and the relations between the Church and the Germanic peoples:

…When the ferocious chief and king of the Huns was about to invade and plunder Rome, coveted by all the Germanic tribes, Pope Saint Leo the Great went out to meet him and, certainly by peaceful means, succeeded in dissuading him from this invasion.

The Germanic kingdoms adapted their customs to those of the Romans. The Church allied itself with the kings and became the great bridge between the Germanic world and the Roman world. The barbarian peoples abandoned their old religious practices and embraced Christianity. The Christian faith expanded throughout western Europe, reinforcing the power of the Pope. It was in the Carolingian Empire, in the 7th century, that the Church managed to consolidate its dominion, continuing later in the Holy Roman Germanic Empire.

In the 4th and 5th centuries, with intense and general preaching, the Church in a short time converted the conquering peoples of the Roman Empire to Christianity. In a time of wars, disintegration, and fragmentation of power, as was feudalism, religion was the only factor uniting peoples. It was also the only institution in the ancient world capable of standing up to the hegemony of the new barbarian dominators.

It was the Church that guaranteed peace, defended the peoples from the excesses of the barbarian invaders, and fought injustices, not by the force of arms, which they did not have, but by the force of reason, decency, and ethics. The barbarians respected the Church for the ascendancy it had before the people and for being the heir of the great Roman Empire which, in fact, still existed in the East.

With the subjugation of the populations in the more rural areas, the only power was that of the bishop; moreover, at the level of Rome, the Pope was the sole representative of the Roman West. In this way, the Church became a political power, and as such, also committed some errors.

Monasticism
Monks and friars were the spiritual knights of the Middle Ages. The culture of the Middle Ages was concentrated in the monasteries. The production of Classical Antiquity was guarded, and the monk copyists had the mission of copying the ancient texts so that they would not be lost over time. Access to the monastery libraries was restricted and the work was manual.

In the Europe of the High Middle Ages, divided into so many unstable kingdoms, the Church was the only strong and efficient institution, educated, rich and present everywhere. In the cities, the bishop was often the only existing authority. In the countryside, the presence of monasteries was affirmed with the Benedictine rule of "Orat ed labora": the monk must not only pray, but also work to support himself and those in need.

Throughout Europe, Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries arose, which became economic centers and, through agriculture and animal husbandry, produced food for the populations.

These monasteries were oases of culture and granaries for it, because it was here that the ancient Latin and Greek texts were copied by hand. Without these copies, these texts would have long been lost. The barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire seems to have set the culture go back, but the Church preserved this culture, as it was the sole heir to the last civilizations illustrated: that of Greece and Rome.

Americans call this era the Dark Ages, and it was to some point. However, it is hard to believe that precisely in this age the most beautiful buildings the world has ever built were constructed: the Gothic cathedrals. Each stone was carved to occupy an exact place, without cement and without iron, these cathedrals were known for their arches, columns, ogives, and vaults, all forming a harmonious and elegant whole, illuminated by multicolored stained-glass windows, a true heaven on earth.

The Gothic Cathedral as ex libris of the Medieval Worldview
It took Greek temples and Roman basilicas for there to be Gothic cathedrals; however, whatever debt the medieval architects owe to their predecessors, the truth is that they surpassed them a thousand times over. The Gothic cathedral represents an exponential advance over Greek and Roman architecture.

The vertiginous verticality of these buildings fully reveals the transformations in taste, scholastic philosophical thought, and aesthetic ideals, translated, at the architectural level, by a renewal of techniques through the introduction of a series of original elements typical of the Gothic style: the vault supported by an ogival cross, the use of the broken arch instead of the full-turn arch,  or Romanesque arch, the use of the flying buttress, and buttresses to support the stone roof formed by a set of vaults.

It is the Christian worldview that explains the unity of spirit that characterized medieval civilization, and hence the reason for the close relationship between scholasticism and Gothic cathedrals, since the full acceptance of the Catholic conception of life generated not only an authentic and unmistakable lifestyle, but also its own philosophy and architectural style.

As the theses of St. Thomas Aquinas, the founder of scholastic philosophy, indicate, God is reached not only by faith, but also by reason, that is, by an effort of complex but refined thought, rigidly formal but rich in subtleties. These same concepts inspired in architecture the Gothic cathedrals, their ascent to God, through complex but exquisite constructions, formally rigorous, but equally rich in detail. In this way, it can be said that scholastic thought is perfectly expressed in the architecture of the Gothic cathedrals.

Conclusion: It is true that the constant internal instability caused by the barbarian invasions and the end of the Pax Romana, as well as the external instability caused by the constant threat of the Vikings to the north and the Muslims to the east, south and west, plunged Europe into a limbo of paralysis and cultural regression. However, it was also this Age that produced a high paradigm of humanity in the ideal of chivalry, and the highest exponent of world architecture in the Gothic cathedrals.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Barbarians worldview

For the Greeks, the peoples north of their borders spoke a language that the did not understand. To them they babbled to what sounded like bar-bar, which gave rise to the word barbarian, that was then used to designate these foreigners. Later, for the Romans, the Latin term barbarus was applied to foreign peoples who did not speak Latin, did not follow Roman laws, and did not participate in their civilization.

The barbarians who conquered the Western Roman Empire were Germanic tribes who never created culture or civilization, nor were they even interested in creating it. We are talking about the Huns, the Vandals (from which the word vandalism comes from), the Goths, the Franks, the Lombards and the Saxons, and later, already in the Middle Ages, the Vikings. It may seem derogatory to call these peoples barbarians, but they were in fact barbarians, with a very primitive culture compared to the Greco-Roman one, with few human values, and dedicated themselves to destroying, killing, stealing, plundering, and raping.

Since they did not know writing, although it had long been in existence, they were still living in prehistory, around the time of the Iron Age, as Iron was the most important element for their wars. Moreover, their cultural or civilizational development was more than 2,000 years behind the Greco-Roman culture.

Greece could have considered the Roman invasion to be a barbarian invasion since it already had a much more developed culture in general than Rome, although the latter was better at things like state administration, law, and architecture. The Roman invasion of Greece was not regarded as a barbarian invasion by the Greeks because the Romans, although more powerful, were also humbler than the Greeks in not imposing their culture, their religion and not even their language as the Greeks had done on the peoples they conquered.

The Romans accepted the culture of others, respected and were tolerant of their ways and customs, and sometimes even allowed them, as in the case of Galilee, to be ruled by their own kings, provided they paid tribute to Rome. In fact, Rome only enforced its culture on the peoples who did not have one to begin with, as was the case throughout the West. This is why neo-Latin languages are spoken in the West today: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian and 50% of the English language.

In the East, Greek prevailed and was later the language of the Byzantium Empire, or the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted considerably longer, being supplanted by a politico-religious empire, the Ottoman Empire, which in turn only ended after World War I.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the Western world was plunged into what English historians call the Dark Ages. Compared to the Ancient Times, the Middle Ages represented a step backwards on all levels. The barbarians who conquered the Empire were only interested in their material wealth, not in building a culture or a civilization. Culture had to take refuge and hide in monasteries, where a Christian version of the ancient world was preserved. The Middle Ages can be seen as a long period during which the Church patiently went about educating these barbarians who held political power, with the Greco-Roman culture it had inherited.

Causes for the Fall of the Roman Empire
Given that the Empire had grown disproportionately immense, it became too difficult to govern. In the third century, Emperor Diocletian split the Empire into two parts: the West with its capital in Rome and the East with its capital in Constantinople or Byzantium. In the short term, this seemed to be a good move to better govern such a vast empire. However, over time, the parts began to diverge; in the West, only Latin was spoken, and in the East, only Greek was spoken. Without enemies, the East grew in power and wealth, while the West gradually withered away, economically as well as militarily.

One of the main causes for the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the invasion of the barbarians, led by the Germanic peoples who lived in the region to the east of the Empire’s borders. Other causes included the decay of the economy based on slaves who worked the land and were artisans, military disintegration as well as military spending on never-ending frontier wars.

The process of the Germanic peoples’ entry into the Roman Empire initially occurred gradually. In the northeast of the Italian Peninsula, the borders of the Roman Empire were demarcated by the Danube and Rhine Rivers. The peoples and tribes that lived beyond these rivers were regarded as Germanic by the Romans.

Since the time of Caesar, the Romans had known of the existence of these peoples. They were organized into clans, did not have a state institution like the Romans, and their laws were based on tradition, transmitted orally, because they did not know writing. They devoted themselves to agriculture and herding. Because of the cold weather in which they lived, they were fearless and fierce. They were warrior peoples, which earned them the reputation of being violent and cruel.

At first, in the spirit of the famous Pax Romana, the Romans established pacts with these tribes; as we said earlier, the Romans were only interested in tribute being paid to Rome, and when the dominated peoples did so, they were granted a high degree of autonomy. However, with the weakening of the central power, these peoples acquired more and more autonomy and independence, becoming true kingdoms that the weakened Rome was powerless to confront.

Around 300 A.D., barbarian groups like the Goths invaded the borders of the Empire. The Romans resisted a Germanic revolt in the late 4th century, but in 410, the Visigoth King Alaric successfully sacked the city of Rome. The Empire spent the next few decades under constant threat, before "the Eternal City" was invaded again in 455, this time by the Vandals.

Finally, in 476, the Germanic leader Odoacer staged a revolt and deposed Emperor Romulus Augustulus. From then on, no Roman emperor would ever rule again from a post in Italy, leading many to cite 476 as the year in which the Western Empire suffered its mortal blow.

Origin of the Germanic Tribes
The Germanic peoples originated from the plains of Denmark and southern Scandinavia. There are traces of human settlements in this area dating back to the Neolithic period, when men began to control nature, domesticating the land and vegetation as well as some species of animals for their own sustenance.

When we speak of Germanic tribes, we speak of many tribes of which the most important are the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, the Franks, the Lombards, the Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons.

The Vikings were also fundamentally a Germanic tribe that inhabited further north in Scandinavia. They ravaged Europe like pirates during the Middle Ages, when the Germanic tribes were already established, forming the first Kingdoms after the fall of the Roman Empire.

As the Germanic population grew and the Empire weakened, the Germanic peoples began to emigrate in all directions, but more to the south and the west, in search of better lands because theirs were no longer sufficient. The Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Lombards entered Italy; the Vandals, Franks, and Visigoths conquered much of Gaul and the Celts who lived there, and the Vandals, Suebi and Visigoths invaded the Iberian Peninsula. Of these, the Vandals came to settle in North Africa, in Carthage, and the Alans settled along the Rhine and in the Alps.

In Great Britain, the Saxons joined the Angles and other local tribes to form the Anglo-Saxons who dominated England until the Norman conquest in the Middle Ages. The rest of the islands, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland remained mostly Celtic. The Celts were not a Germanic tribe. They had their own culture and inhabited Central Europe. They were the famous inhabitants of Gaul, the Gauls conquered by Julius Caesar. They had also invaded the Iberian Peninsula before the Romans, joining the first peoples who had invaded, the Iberians, from North Africa.

Culture and Organization of the Germanic Tribes
Early Germanic society was characterized by a strict code of ethics, which valued above all trust, loyalty, and courage. Acquiring honor, fame, and recognition was a primary ambition. Independence, autonomy, and individuality were highly emphasized values.

This is probably the reason why the Germanic peoples never constituted a great empire or even a unified Germanic state. The environment in which the Germanic peoples were emerged, namely their connection to the forest and the sea, played an important role in the formation of these values. Germanic oral literature is full of scorn for characters who failed to live up to Germanic ideals.

In the Germanic language, ger-man means the man of the spear. For the Germanic peoples, the loss of the spear or shield was equivalent to the loss of honor. The Germanic peoples were warriors by nature, born in war and for war; from an early age, they were trained in the art of war just like the Spartans. Loyalty and devotion to the clan they belonged to, and through it, to the tribe and its leader, was one of their highest values; this sense of unity won them many victories.

Kingship is therefore a fundamental element that unites Germanic society. As with other peoples, its origin as an institution is sacred, and so the king combines the functions of military leader, high priest, legislator, and judge.

The Germanic monarchy was partly elective; the king was elected by free men from among eligible candidates from a family that could trace its ancestry back to the divine or semi-divine founder of the tribe. Although Germanic society was highly stratified between leaders, free men, and slaves, its culture also emphasized equality. Occasionally, the freemen of the tribe would even overrule the decisions of their own leaders.

Through the influence of the Roman Empire, the power of the Germanic kings over their own people increased over the centuries, in part because the mass migrations at the time required more severe leadership.

Literature
Because the Germanic peoples did not know writing before their encounter with Roman culture, Germanic literature was passed orally from generation to generation. Its content was linked to its main purpose which was to honor the gods or praise tribal ancestors, chieftains, warriors and their associates, wives, and other relatives.

Religion
According to the Roman writer Tacitus, the Germanic peoples worshipped mainly "Mercury", but also "Hercules", and "Mars". These were generally identified with Odin, Thor and Týr, the gods of wisdom, thunder, and war, respectively. They also worshipped the goddesses Nerthus and Freya.

Archaeological discoveries suggest that early Germanic peoples practiced some of the same "spiritual" rituals as the Celts, including human sacrifice, divination, and belief in spiritual connection with their natural surroundings. Like the Romans, there was a difference between domestic worship and communal worship; in the home, the father of the family played the role of a priest.

Religious ceremonies were performed in woods, lakes, and islands considered sacred, not in temples; the Germanic peoples did not build temples to perform their religious rites. For the sacrifices offered to the gods, all kinds of livestock were slaughtered, and sometimes even humans, and the blood was sprinkled over the people who then made toasts to the gods and ate the meat. The victims, both human and animal, were hung from trees. One of the trees in the woods would be the most sacred of all, and underneath it there would be a pit in which a live man would be buried.

No common conception about life after death is known to any Germanic peoples. Some believed that the fallen hero warriors would go to Valhalla to live happily with Odin, while the evil ones could pursue the living after they were dead; if that were to happen, they would have to be killed more than once to stop pursuing the living. This is probably where the "Game of Thrones" series was inspired to create the "Walkers", the undead who had to be killed by fire to stay dead.

After the conquest of the Roman Empire, the Germanic peoples gradually converted to Christianity at different periods: the Goths in the 4th century, the Saxons in the 6th and 7th centuries, under pressure from the already converted Franks; the Danes, under German pressure, in the 10th century. Paganism held out longer in the northernmost lands, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

Conclusion: Despite lagging more than 2000 years behind the Greco-Roman cultural development and civilization, the Germanic peoples contributed to medieval Europe with their values of autonomy, independence, and freedom, based on the principle that we are all equal in dignity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC