Growing Through Medievalism

Conduit for Antiquity

Many streams came together to constitute the Europe’s complex inheritance from antiquity. Most proximately we think of Greece’s Glory and Rome’s Grandeur, and, most especially, the spirituality of the East, through the sayings and life of a Messianic Jew, believed to be the Son of God. This has been the story of our cultural evolution. We cannot begin PsyQuest “at the beginning,” any more than we could start the process of biological evolution over. It’s impossible to think outside the stream of culture. What we can do is try to understand our inheritance.

Medievalism

The first thing we need to understand about the Medievals is that they didn’t know they were … medieval, that is. “Medieval” means “Between the Ages” and the humans then alive felt they were in the final time, before the Messiah should appear. They had not the foggiest idea about where civilization would go. They had not yet developed concepts of cultural evolution nor even of history as we would understand it. In the midst of great political instability and turmoil, they hoped to achieve ultimate truth within the structure of philosohical theology … when they weren’t out hacking up Saracens, that is.

Feudalism

As Roman organization and bureaucracy fell into disrepair and decay, government deteriorated. Local leaders emerged who took under their control what they could. Gradually a nobility emerged, who owned the land, and exercised authority over the people who lived on it. Times were hard and violent. Castles were built to protect the rulers, who emerged as counts, dukes or kings. Nary a castle, though, without its dungeon and its torture chamber. Although society was nominally Christian, force of arms was what held society together, and law usually was the will of the prince.

Universities

A distinct phenomenon, which played, and still continues to play, a major role in guiding the cultural stream was the development of universities, essentially freestanding institutions of learning and education. Differing interests converged to support universities: a need for administrators of kingdoms, the demands of commerce and trade, the interests of the Church, and … curiosity. Oxford, Paris, and Bologna came first, but by 1400, there were already over 50 institutions of higher learning in European cities.

The Cosmos

In the Middle Ages, the world was a more circumscribed and generally simpler place than what we are accustomed to. Time, space and the History of Man were all mentally within close reach. The long past was mostly the stories of Greece, Rome and the Jewish people, since that was what written documents portrayed. The world came into existence according to the Creation Story of Genesis … and as late as the 18th century, that was thought to be about 6000 years ago. The earth was solidly at the center of things. Galileo, as late as 1632, was persecuted by the Church for thinking otherwise. The stars were lights affixed to a crystal sphere poised indefinitely far from the surface of the earth. Most importantly, the significant history of the race was seen in the light of moral values and spirituality. Man was created in Eden, fell from grace in Adam’s sin, could find redemption in Jesus, and would live (or die) eternally after the Second Coming of the Redeemer.

Orthodoxy Under Siege

Although there was a generally accepted cosmology during Medieval times, it would be far from true to identify a truly monolithic system. It took several centuries for a more or less consistent theology to develop, and even then, there were always dissenters who challenged all or part of common belief. Splinter religious groups always rose to shake the foundations of orthodoxy. The Church assumed the role of arbiter of truth, and was more or less oppressive in carrying out this role. The Inquisition was formed to assure purity of teaching. As culture verged towards the Renaissance, astronomers began to question the nature of the Cosmos. Thinkers began more and more to trust experience as a source of truth. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology began to raise more confident voices. Gradually man began to accept that in many ways, the world was not as for a thousand years he had generally thought it to be.

The Legacy

Farthest from the truth would be a conviction that the Middle Ages were times of ignorance, cultural stagnation and primitive belief. Above all, the medieval centuries were the avenue by which we prepared for the explosion of knowledges which characterize the modern world. A solid foundation of institutional learning and scholarship had been laid down. Architects had designed and built the great cathedrals, fortresses, and cities. Mathematical sophistication flourished. Artistic creativity challenged the boundaries of imagination and technic. The human mind had positioned itself for a complex assault on the physical cosmos.

Thinkers of transcendent power had struggled with the mystery of intelligence and spirit in the universe within religious constructs. The world was seen as dependent on an all powerful creative intellect, God, and the human race was seen as intelligent because created in God’s image. God’s intelligent handiwork was to be found in Nature. But, there was no clear further place to go with these ideas. We have gone off in all directions, pursuing the adventure of discovery, with outstanding success. By so doing, we have created a vast chasm between our empirical convictions and our spiritual intuitions.