Appeals to reason

The Making of the Middle Ages 
by R.W. Southern 

This is a well written and interesting book, a pleasure to read and illuminating, with many small gems along the way. 

It is a commentary really on cultural changes over the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. Its first section concerns the opening up of Western European minds to the existence of very different cultures beyond their boundaries. There was a total absence of strategic, large scale thinking, and the crusades and the eventual capturing of Constantinople provoked changes that were neither anticipated nor welcome. The Byzantine Empire which the Western Christians helped to undermine and destroy had acted as a buffer zone, protecting against Islamic expansion into Europe, while the ill organised Islamic opposition encountered by the first crusade was transformed into a much better organised and very coherent opposition by the time of the later crusades. 

The second section, looking at the "bonds of society", reviews the development of serfdom, free men and their concept of liberty, and the nobility. It is describing the development of the feudal state out of the chaos prevailing at the start of this period. A key point made is that serfs would be subject to the arbitrary directions of their master, while there was a pressure in the development of the nobility to insist on the right to exercise arbitrary power and authority. Liberty was therefore equated with the operation of laws, and the more free men could appeal to the principles of law, the more free they were from arbitrary authority. There was active consideration of the notion that kings exercised a divine / priestly role, but this was seen to provide excessive power at the expense of all other orders, not least the local nobility from dukes down to knights. Knights, incidentally, evolved in this period from simply men of violence, who could exercise control through their physical violence, to become increasingly incorporated into local government, subject to controls and regulation which permitted the progression of society from chaos to the order of the feudal world. 

The book then examines the changing organisation of the Christian Church, and considers a variety of innovations that later - in the Reformation - would be seen in a new and negative light. For some centuries prior to this period, the papacy simply presided over some valuable shrines of saints and martyrs and benefited from the tradition of pilgrimages, especially to the shrine for St Peter. As both the Church and the state began to enter into more formal, legal structures, a demand emerged for a court of appeal as it were, somewhere to permit a resolution to interminable legal wrangles over matters including rights of succession and rights over property and land. The creation of a strong papacy, with legal jurisdiction throughout Western Europe, was not an imposition but a response to demand. The religious potency of shrines and the graves and bones of saints and martyrs originally favoured southern lands, notably Rome itself, for simply reasons of history. During this period, local churches set about securing - by theft as well as trade - their own share of relics and bones, until any self respecting church or monastery could preside over its own collection of these potent tokens of religious prestige and authority. The book also describes in some detail the development of monastic life and rule, primarily the rule of St Benedict but later the emergence of others such as the Cistercians. It is clear minded regarding both their defects and their genuine strengths, since there was no gap between the monastic and secular worlds and the monasteries played important roles in social life. 

Finally the book turns to the development of ideas in this seminal period. Monasteries and cathedrals played a role initially in gathering together and placing into a systematic order the scope of available knowledge, and while this might appear restricted in its scope, it was the necessary and unavoidable prelude to permit the later development of creative and original thinking. Without doubt, the extent to which knowledge gained in antiquity had been lost to the Western mind was profound. The book describes the utter ignorance about quite basic mathematics and geometry as an example of the ground to be recovered. This recovery was, of course, made possible primarily through contact with the Islamic world, notably in Spain. 

The values and structures painfully constructed in this period were of course the very things on which the Reformation and the Enlightenment would later direct their anger. This is not a defensive book however, since what it describes is, in its context, highly attractive and impressive. The turn to logic and reasoning and the exploration of new knowledge from foreign and alien sources were optimistic and potentially exciting developments in their time and indeed, potentially threatening to established dogmatic thought. Other books have pointed out the obvious, which is that in the absence of the achievements described here. neither the Reformation nor the Enlightenment would have been possible. 

I especially enjoyed this quote though I regret it is at the expense of the period in question: it attacks the optimistic mediaeval confidence that the truth would be arrived at through logic and reasoning. 

"Is there anything more inconsistent with civil conversation, and the end of all debate, than not to take an answer, though ever so full and satisfactory, but still to go on with the dispute as long as equivocal sounds can furnish a 'medius terminus', a term to wrangle with on the one side or a distinction on the other?......for this in short is the way and perfection of logical disputes, that the opponent never takes any answer, nor the respondent ever yield to any argument." John Locke, Thoughts Concerning Education, 1690,.

I like it because it caused me to notice that people who appeal to logic and reasoning claim to be employing the values of the Enlightenment but are sometimes doing nothing of the kind. They are appealing to the mediaeval thought of St Anselm. An example I suggest is classical economics, Austrian economics and neoliberal economics. Depending - or so they claim - on logical progression from first principles, they are devoid of empirical grounding for their totally rational and totally unscientific theories. Another example is the traditional American game of appealing to the constitution and to the first principles on which it is allegedly (but not really) grounded. Again, that is an appeal to dogma dressed up as Enlightenment thinking. They often appeal to Locke but Locke, it seems from this quote, has other thoughts. 

Hopefully though I have not based this review on the argument that this is a useful let alone a topical book. Heaven protect us from utility. It is instead an attractive and pleasing book, an exploration of ideas and a respectful remembrance of times past. It is a light read and provokes much that is amusing and enlightened. After reading so many weighty academic tomes, how pleasant to find this one as a reward for my continued effort.