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