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Book Length: 240 pages
Even in our so-called Information Age, the popular image of the Middle Ages remains one of intellectual and material poverty. Nothing could be further from the truth; for though the material progress of mankind was far less than what has been achieved today, that age was rather the subsequent period that followed the Dark Age—the Fall of the Western Empire—rather than a merely synonymous term for that span of plunder and disaster. How can the Middle Ages be accused of neglect for the intellectual and physical well-being of European man, when they saw the rise of the great institutions of the university and the hospital—both of these being creations of the supposedly benighted Catholic Church! As with his recounting of the Dark Age and its immediate aftermath in The Making of Europe, the eminent historian Christopher Dawson traced out and explored the breath and scope of the Middle Ages in his study Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. Given his faithful picture of the events and currents of the time, it is well worth delving into what he has to say of this period and, indeed, what this period still has to say to ourselves.
How then did the transition from the Dark Age to the Middle Ages occur? It came about, as Dawson demonstrates, by the successful conversion of the barbarian Germanic tribes to the Catholic Faith and their subsequent incorporation into the Latin culture of Western Europe. And precisely what mentality guided the bishops, priests, and monks when they met these peoples? One borne of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not a gospel of “humanity”—one that was not afraid to judge justly and preach the truth in season and out of season:
(35)
The Western Church did not come to the barbarians with a civilizing mission or any conscious hopes of social progress, but with a tremendous message of divine judgment and divine salvation. Humanity was born under a curse, enslaved by the dark powers of cosmic evil and sinking ever deeper under the burden of its own guilt. Only by the way of the Cross and by the grace of the crucified Redeemer was it possible for men to extricate themselves from the massa damnata of unregenerate humanity and escape from the wreckage of a doomed world.
Though this “tremendous message” was concerned primarily with reconciling men to God in that age of chaos, it understandably produced a better temporal situation which saw its pinnacle in the Carolingian Empire. However, the unity which that magnificent state gave to much of the Continent and to the West as a whole would not last long, for within decades the mass invasion of the pagan Vikings toppled this new order. Dawson does not hesitate to write of the late ninth century great conflict that “There has never been a war which so directly threatened the existence of Western Christendom as a whole” (87). Reflecting further on this Second Dark Age, as he terms it, he states that:
(88)
Above all, this age destroyed the hope of a pacific development of culture which had inspired the leaders of the Church and the missionary movement and reasserted the warlike character of Western society which it had inherited from its barbarian past. Hencefoward the warrior ethos, the practice of private war and the blood feud were as prevalent in Christian society as among its pagan neighbours. The reign of law which Charlemagne and the ecclesiastical statesmen of the Carolingian Empire had attempted to impose was forgotten, and the personal relation of fidelity between lord and vassal became the only basis of social organization.
Thus came the rise of the feudal society and with it, a revival of Christendom from near annihilation. For even in those places where the Vikings gained a permanent holding, it was Catholicism and not the Norse gods that won the devotion of the conquerors:
(Ibid)
But in so far as these changes lessened the distance between the Christians and the barbarians, they made it easier for the latter to become assimilated by Christian society. The Viking conquerors on Christian soil in England, Normandy and Ireland often became Christian from the moment of their settlement, thus forming an intermediate zone between Christendom and the pagan world through which Christian influence gradually penetrated back to the homelands of the conquerors and prepared the way for the conversion of Scandinavia.
How providential, then, that such good came out of such misfortune! This surprising reality is a recurrence of what Joseph said: “You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good” (Genesis 50:20). For the pagans indeed thought and did evil to the Christians; but God “turned it into good” by utilizing their settling among those of his flock to draw them to the saving faith of His Church.
Despite this victory, there were many problems within the Church. Alongside the secularization of church property that occurred as a result of the rise of feudalism, grave issues concerning clerical discipline and morality where rearing their heads. The reform of the eleventh century—a subject to which Dawson devotes an entire chapter—thus came as a relief to the troubled Church and the new civilization that was being reared under her maternal guidance. But the pulling down and planting that had begun in the monasteries would take time to be championed by the See of St. Peter, for this divine institution was itself in need of this movement’s fervor:
(128)
So long, however, as the Papacy was under the control of the Roman nobility, its interests were limited by the feuds of local factions; and so far from taking the lead in the movement of reform, it was in dire need of reform itself.
The reform was therefore destined to be a mere regional movement, unless if one of two things were to happen: either the Roman nobility would end its squabbling and thus enable the Papacy to lead the reform, or a secular ruler would intervene. The latter happened with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, who “…was an austere and devout man, a friend of saints and reformers, who took his theocratic responsibility towards the Church very seriously” (Ibid). To illustrate the near universal acclaim to which Christendom responded to the drastic action of this Emperor, Dawson relates that:
(Ibid)
Even St. Peter Damian, leader of the Italian reformers, accepts his control of the Papacy as a manifestation of divine Providence, and he compares his reforming action to that of Christ driving the money-changers from the temple!
This necessary seizure would also go on to influence the reform itself, ensuring that it would be embraced by the whole Catholic world:
(129)
The introduction of this foreign element into the Curia had a revolutionary effect on the Papacy, which became the hierarchical centre of organ of leadership for the reforming movement. The reform of the Church was no longer the aim of scattered groups of ascetics and idealists, it became the official policy of the Roman Church.
The reasons as to why I have dwelt at length with Dawson’s thorough coverage of this period ought to be self-evident to traditional Catholics: for is not our age a Dark Age, though a more “civilized” one? And is not this age of materialism and lechery—if it does not cease to “progress” to its logical conclusion—destined to end in such an outpouring of blood and fire that will outdo the Second Dark Age? Yet, as the careful study of that age shows, there was hope for the future of Western Civilization; thus, we ought to take hope that, so long as we remain faithful to the ways of our forefathers and reject idleness and despair, our civilization will triumph over the decadence that has almost entirely destroyed it.
Moreover, the state of the Church in our time provides another point of comparison. The traditional Catholic groups are perhaps analogous to those orders out of which the reform of the eleventh century began; and as with the story of that reform, Rome in our time is occupied by factions hostile to a genuine reform of the Church. There must be an intervention to end the present Crisis of the Church, whether through the conversion of the modernist hierarchy, the direct chastisement of God, or the calling of some great Catholic leader yet to come to drive the Lavender Mafia and their allies from St. Peter’s Basilica. Perhaps a mixture of these three possibilities will come to pass—but at any rate, history indicates to us that God will not allow the wolves in sheep’s clothing to forever desecrate His Church.
To return to the present subject, Dawson goes on to demonstrate how the European Unity (as he termed it in The Making of Europe) continued to grow and develop as a result of the Papacy’s embrace of the reform movement in the mid-eleventh century and the Crusades, the first of which began at the end of that century. Observe then, that Christendom was unified not only by an effort of purifying its interior, but also by the rallying of its members against the external enemy of Mohammedanism. The Catholic nature of this civilization, which was transitioning further and further away from the barbarism of the Dark Age to a more clear reflection of the Faith, was present in all aspects of life down to the level of the city and the guild:
(172)
The medieval city…was essentially a unity—a visible and tangible unity, sharply defined by the circle of its walls and towers and centred in the cathedral, the visible embodiment of the faith and spiritual purpose of the community. And within the city, the autonomous corporate organization of the different economic activities in the economic and social life of the community, by means of the gild system, corresponds perfectly with the doctrine of the organic differentiation and mutual interdependence of the members of Christian society.
How marvelous was this unity, that placed God and not man at the center of all things! The contrast to the modern city is appalling, for it tells us the sad story of modern man: without a true foundation and without a place to belong. For these new cities lack a true center—as modern man lacks a shared vision of moral and religious truth—and though they have corporations, they have no guilds. Modern man has “liberty” but liberty to do what? To be a slave of his own vices and to mammon?
On this point, it must be noted that Medieval Europe gave the world such great men as St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Hugh of St. Victor, Chaucer, and Roger Bacon—despite possessing a far less sizable population than the modern West. Yet how few great men the likes of these, despite this advantage in raw numbers—and far higher rates of literacy—has the West produced in the last sixty years? The appalling lack of eminence and magnanimity of our age reveals that while our civilization is materially richer, it is culturally and intellectually weaker than that less scientifically advanced age. Furthermore, it indicates to us that both institutions and individuals have abused their freedom in modernity; for in the present time there is greater access to knowledge than ever before, yet the philistine spirit of Cultural Marxism has poisoned the heart of our culture. The medievals, on the contrary, had a notion of liberty worthy of that name:
(172-173)
For the medieval idea of liberty, which finds its highest expression in the life of the free cities, was not the right of the individual to follow his own will, but the privilege of sharing in a highly organized form of corporate life which possessed its own constitution and rights of self-government. In many cases this constitution was hierarchical and authoritarian, but as every corporation had its own rights in the life of the city, so every individual had his place and his rights in the life of the gild.
Thus in the hierarchy of the medieval city, each man had both a place and rights—and rights could be truly defended because they were founded upon the laws of God and were connected to the life of the community. Modern cities may offer everyone a place, but cannot deliver on this, for they are morally vacuous debt-colonies; and a similar deception underlies the “rights” of their inhabitants. These abstractions, which have as their ultimate authority the secular state, are mere letters on documents which can be reinterpreted by the arbitrary reasoning of the regime.
One only needs to look back upon the events of 2020 to witness what relationship between state and citizen really lies behind the twenty-first century “social contract”—surely, no real or fictitious story about the tyrant kings or robber barons of the Middle Ages surpasses what was inflicted upon the world five years ago without so much as a gunshot! Must we, after considering this comparison, dare confess that the medieval free city embodied both liberty and inclusion in truth? While we cannot recreate the exact conditions of medieval Christendom, there is therefore much to be learned from what was undoubtedly—and despite its faults—the apex of our civilization.
Dawson, in the following words which close out this work, provides the reader with a truly sublime thought:
(224)
….[T]he importance of these centuries…is not to be found in the external order they attempted to create, but in the internal change they brought about in the soul of Western man—a change which can never be entirely undone expect by the total negation or destruction of Western man himself.
Western man, as he writes, has been internally changed by the Age of Faith—he has been, by means of analogy to the sacrament of Baptism, has impressed with an indelible Christian character. The West has been, consequently, baptized; now, however—like the soul that has forsaken the holy vows of that sacrament—it serves the pomps and works of Satan. Much of this is indeed due to the presence of the bourgeois elite, who seek to make us forget our souls and turn us into worshipers of Mammon “whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:19).
But despite having largely succeeded in this, there is not only a remnant but a revival of that Faith which they have sought to extinguish. This is manifestly seen at present in the unforeseen resurgence of traditional Catholicism, despite the pretensions at the beginning of this century that Christianity was soon to die a terrible death. Yet, the Faith has risen again—and in this reawakening we all share in the victory of the Middle Ages.
This work is recommended to the Catholic student of history, and all others who wish to know the real story of how European civilization was formed out of near total defeat into the enlightened realm of Christendom.