Intellectual Progress: the Middle Ages

Historians know that lots of cliches and stereotypes are promoted by “High School Platitudes” – a series inaccurate oversimplifications diffused by mediocre textbooks. Such mistaken ideas have formed the common wisdom of society, and left millions with erroneous notions of the past. Such is the case with the Middle Ages.

Professor Anthony Esolen wants to

set the record straight. From 962 (the crowning of Otto the Great as Holy Roman Emperor) to 1321 (the death of Dante), Europe enjoyed one of the most magnificent flourishing of culture the world has seen. In some ways it was the most magnificent. And this was not despite the fact that the daily tolling of the church bells provided the rhythm of men’s lives, but because of it. Because the people believed they lived in a comic world, that is a world redeemed from sin, wherein the Savior had triumphed over darkness and death, they could love that world aright. They were pilgrims at heart, who yet passionately loved their native lands, their town walls, their hillsides, their many colorful festivals, their local food and drink. They enjoyed the freedom of hope. They were not pressed to death with the urgency to create a heaven upon earth, a longing that ends in despair.

Professor Esolen indicates that what we call the Middle Ages was a dynamic burst of creativity – in mathematics, natural sciences, music, painting, poetry, and other fields – fueled by a sense of hope and optimism. The Middle Ages notably lacked utopian schemes; such thought, while intended to bring hope, inevitably creates despondency, because it places upon the people the burden of making possible something which is impossible, and because such schemes are always fated to fail. More common was a realism which acknowledged that the world wasn’t perfect, and couldn’t be made perfect, but that it could be made better. This realism, and the notion of an afterlife, bred optimism.

The Middle Ages gave birth to the age of exploration around the year 1000 A.D., as Lief Ericson arrived in North America. Shortly after 476 A.D., Boethius translated Aristotle’s works for Europe. Around 800 A.D., the church commissioned artists to paint scenes from Homer inside the monastery’s sanctuary at Corvey, where books by Tacitus were being copied by monks. Around 850 A.D., the Irish philosopher John Scotus Eriugena was busy translating Greek literature and philosophy. In sum, the early Middle Ages were a time in intense intellectual activity.