Тopic 8. Middle Ages

Middle Ages is a period in the history of Europe that lasted from about ad 350 to about 1450. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the western half of the Roman Empire began to fragment into smaller, weaker kingdoms. By the end of the Middle Ages, many modern European states had taken shape. During this time, the precursors of many modern institutions, such as universities and bodies of representative government, were created.

No single event ended the ancient world and began the Middle Ages. In fact, no one who lived in what is now called the Middle Ages ever thought of themselves as living in it. In the Middle Ages, people thought they were living in modern times, just as people do today.

The term Middle Ages was invented by people during the Renaissance, a period of cultural and literary change in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The term was not meant as a compliment. During the Renaissance, people thought that their own age and the time of ancient Greece and Rome were advanced and civilized. They called the period between themselves and the ancient world " the Middle Age." The adjective medieval comes from the Latin words for this term, medium (middle) and aevum (age).

Historians adopted this term even though it was originally meant to belittle the period. Since the Middle Ages covers such a large span of time, historians divided it into three parts: the Early Middle Ages, lasting from about 350 to about 1050; the High Middle Ages, lasting from about 1050 to about 1300; and the Late Middle Ages, lasting from about 1300 to about 1450. Historians used to believe that most of the cultural, economic, and political achievements of the Middle Ages occurred in the second period, and because of this they called that period “High.” Only recently, as the accomplishments of the Early and Late Middle Ages have gained appreciation, has this term fallen into disuse. Today, historians often use a more neutral name, the Central Middle Ages.

The Early Middle Ages saw the continuation of trends set in Late Antiquity, depopulation, deurbanization, and increased barbarian invasion. North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the eastern Roman Empire, were conquered by Islam. Later in the period, the establishment of the feudal system allowed a return to systemic agriculture. There was sustained urbanization in northern and western Europe. During the High Middle Ages (c. 1000 - 1300), Christian-oriented art and architecture flourished and Crusades were mounted to recapture the Holy Land. The influence of the emerging nation-state was tempered by the ideal of an international Christendom. The codes of chivalry and courty love set rules for proper behavior, while the Scholastic philosophers attempted to reconcile faith and reason. Outstanding achievement in this period includes the Code of Justinian, the mathematics of Fibonacci and Oresme, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the painting of Giotto, and the poetry of Dante and Chaucer.

 

 

Byzantine Middle Ages

 

In 330 the Roman emperor Constantine I, Constantine the Great, inaugurated the city of Byzantium, which he had previously renamed after himself the “city of Constantine”, Constantinople, as the New Rome, the new capital of the Roman Empire. Constantinople remained as capital of the empire until May 29, 1453, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks and the Byzantine Empire, as a political entity, ceased to exist. “Byzantine” is the term that we have given to this empire, from the original city, Byzantium. Its inhabitants called themselves “Romans”, “Romaioi” in Greek, throughout their history, and they regarded their empire as the seamless continuation of the Roman Empire.

According to G.Ostrogorsky (History of the Byzantine State, New Brunswick, 1969), Roman political concepts, Greek culture and the Christian faith were the main elements which determined Byzantine development. Without all three the Byzantine way of life would have been inconceivable. It was the integration of Hellenistic culture and the Christian religion within the Roman imperial framework that gave rise to that historical phenomenon which we know as the Byzantine Empire. This synthesis was made possible by the increasing concern of the Roman Empire with the East which was necessitated by the crisis of the third century. Its first visible expressions were the recognition of Christianity by the imperium romanum and the foundation of the new capital on the Bosphorus. These two events – the victory of Christianity and the virtual transference of the political centre of the Empire to the hellenized East – mark the beginning of the Byzantine period.

Certainly the structures of administration and government of the Byzantine Empire came from those of the Roman, from the emperor at the top of the bureaucracy, through the different levels of military, judicial, fiscal and ecclesiastical administration. Latin was the original language of the administration, but Constantinople was a Greek city and Greek was the literary language of the empire. Over time, it became the language of government.

Further, from the start, the Byzantine Empire was a Christian empire. Constantine had converted to Christianity, perhaps in 312, and he founded his new city with a mixture of Christian and pagan rites. So, right from its inception, Byzantium was a state that perceived itself as Roman, while being Christian and increasingly employing Greek as its lingua franca. These three elements almost encapsulate the empire.

To Romans living in the Roman empire, that empire was unchanging, or so they claimed. New Rome was Old Rome reborn; the Roman empire held perpetual primacy among the nations. One of the implicit themes within this volume is of changing yet continuous institutions, beliefs, value-systems, culture. But from the start, there were two major differences between the Roman and Byzantine empires: Byzantium was, for much of its life, a Greek – speaking empire, orientated towards Greek, not Latin culture; and it was a Christian empire. Greek within the empire was not one language, but one functioning at different levels of society. The version spoken by all classes in informal situations and by the uneducated at all times was one form, a koine, or “common”, language, used for “subliterary” writings ranging from the New Testament to popular saints’ lives and chronicles such as that of Theophanes. At the other end of the scale was a version of Attic Greek, archaic and imitative of Greek from the Classical world, or, rather, the Byzantines’ understanding of such Greek. This was the language of official, public and literary texts; mastery of it was a sign of intellectualism, education, and social standing.

Christianity was the all-pervasive ideology of the Byzantine empire, its rituals, doctrines, and structures dominating every aspect of life. The empire itself was believed to be God’s chosen empire, ruled by God’s chosen emperor: one empire, one emperor under one God. This empire, in Byzantine belief, was the fourth, and last, of the four kingdoms revealed in the Book of Daniel, divinely preordained as the last empire; its fall would mean the end of the world. In being Byzantine, one was first and foremost Christian, though that Christianity might come in various forms and might lead to one’s exclusion from the Byzantine oikoumene. This important term, meaning the inhabited world, was one with various resonances in Byzantium: it could be used to designate the world as a whole; to describe the inhabited or civilized world; and increasingly it carried a Christian significance as the world as the scene of Christ’s activities and the correct celebration of the sacraments across the world.

The Byzantines themselves calculated all dates from the Creation of the world, not from Christ’s birth, and chroniclers such as Theophanes tended to date their works by “world years”, Anno Mundi (AM) from the Creation. The Creation was generally reckoned to have taken place 5, 508 years before the Incarnation; and the Second Coming of Christ, signifying the end of time, was known to be inevitable, and sometimes dated to 7, 000 or 8, 000 years from Creation.

To make the history of Byzantium more manageable, Byzantinists tend to break it down into three stages. The time from the third century down to the sixth or seventh or even eighth centuries is known variously, depending on the perspective of the particular scholar, as the Late Antique or Late Roman (these terms suggest continuity from the Roman period), or Early Christian or Early Byzantine (implying something different from the Roman period). The Middle Byzantine period begins wherever one believes the Early one ends: variously, therefore, from 565 (the death of the emperor Justinian); 610 (the accession of the emperor Heraklios); 717 (the start of the Isaurian dynasty); or 848 (the end of Iconoclasm). It ends in either 1071 (the Battle of Mantzikert, when the Byzantine army was defeated by the Seljuqs and the emperor captured) or 1204 (the Sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade). Late Byzantium covers 1204 (or 1261: the recovery of Constantinople from the Latins) to the end of the empire in 1453. After this, one is drawn into the post-Byzantine world and the survival of Byzantine beliefs and culture, particularly visible in the survival and spread of Orthodox Christianity.

With the disturbances of the crisis the Roman principate went under, and disappeared during Diocletian's absolute rule, out of which the Byzantine autocracy was to develop. The old municipal authorities of the Roman cities were in a condition of grave deterioration. The whole administration of the State was centered in the hands of the Emperor and his administrative officials, and after considerable expan­sion this civil service was to become the backbone of the Byzantine autocracy. The Roman system of magistrates gave place to the Byzantine bureaucracy. The Emperor was no longer the first magis­trate, but an absolute ruler, and his power was derived not so much from earthly authorities as from the will of God. The time of crisis with its heavy trials and tribulations had inaugurated an age when men turned to religion and the world to come.

The concept of sovereignty as something rooted in the will of the people did not entirely disappear, and the senate, the city population organized in demes, and the army show themselves as political forces which imposed real limitations on the imperial power, particularly in the early Byzantine period. The significance of these factors, rooted in the Roman past, subsequently dwindled before the all-embracing imperial authority. On the other hand, the Church, as the spiritual power in a Christian state, exercised an increasingly weighty influence as time went on. In the early Byzantine period the Emperor still had almost unlimited control over the Church and in accordance with Roman practice he treated the religion of his subjects as part of the ius publicum. But in the middle ages the Church estab­lished itself of necessity in Byzantium, as elsewhere, as a force to be reckoned with, and it was here that imperial authority received its most severe setback. Byzantium saw not infrequent clashes between the secular and spiritual powers in which the imperial side was by no means always the victor. But antagonism between the imperium and the sacerdotium was not characteristic of Byzantium where there was on the whole a close and intimate relationship between State and Church, a fundamental interdependence of the Orthodox Empire and the Orthodox Church which together formed a single political and ecclesiastical entity. It was usual to find both powers with a common aim com­bining together against any danger which threatened the order of the divinely ordained world, whether by reason of internal or external enemies of the Emperor or of the undermining forces of the various heresies. But an understanding of this kind tended to bring the Church under the direct protection of the powerful Empire, and so the prepon­derance of the imperial over the ecclesiastical authority always remained characteristic and, as it were, the normal relationship in Byzantium.

Byzantine civilization was not only directly descended from late antiquity, but had the closest affinities with its way of life. As in the Hellenistic world, the various elements in Byzantium were bound together by a common cultural bond. Both worlds had something of an epigonic and eclectic character, especially Byzantium. Both lived on their heritage of great creative works, and their own productions were not so much original as in the nature of synthesis. The compiler was a type common to both ages. It is true that a predilection for compilation denoted a real intellectual aridity, that imitation skimmed over the meaning and content of the subject matter, and empty con­ventional rhetoric often missed the original beauty of form, but on the other hand a great deal is owed to Byzantium for its solicitous preserva­tion of classical masterpieces and its careful attention to Roman law and Greek culture. The two high-lights and the two antipodes of the ancient world, Greece and Rome, grew together on Byzantine soil, the sphere of their greatest achievement: the Roman state and Greek civilization united to produce a new way of life inextricably bound up with that Christian religion which the old Empire and the old civiliza­tion had once so strongly repudiated. Christian Byzantium proscribed neither pagan art nor pagan learning. Roman law always remained the basis of its legal system and legal outlook, and Greek thought of its intellectual life. Greek learning and philosophy, Greek historians and poets, were the models of the most devout of Byzantines. The Church itself incorporated into its teaching much of the thought of the pagan philosophers and used their intellectual equipment in articulating Christian doctrine.

This tenacious awareness of the classical achievements was a special source of strength to the Byzantine Empire. Rooted in the Greek tradition, Byzantium stood for a thousand years as the most important stronghold of culture and learning; rooted in Roman concepts of government, its Empire had a predominant place in the medieval world. The Byzantine State had at its disposal a unique administrative machine with a highly differentiated and well-trained civil service, its military technique was superb, and it possessed an excellent legal system and was based on a highly-developed economic and financial system. It commanded great wealth and its gold coinage became increasingly the pivot of the state economy. In this it differed funda­mentally from other states of late antiquity and the early medieval periods with their natural economy. The power and prestige of Byzan­tium were founded above all on its gold and in its heyday its credit seemed to be inexhaustible.

The Late Byzantine period was a time of unprecedented activity in the fields of the sciences and of education and learning, as new schools and libraries were founded, older manuscripts were copied, while an abundance of new scientific works (mainly philosophical ones) were produced. It was a time of intense intellectual exploration. All these activities were inspired by the intellectual movement known as the Palaiologan Renaissance, a basic characteristic of which was the renewal of interest in Greek antiquity and in the study, preservation and revival of its culture. This scientific activity covered every aspect of knowledge and thinking known at the time.

Philosophy, in the Late Byzantine period, offers no original concept. However, many works produced at the time bear the mark of the intellectual movements of humanism and the Palaiologan Renaissance. Their authors sought a system of philosophical thought, and aimed at the dissemination and assimilation of ancient Greek philosophy. Although essentially opposed to each other to the end, as the hesychast conflict showed, nonetheless the Byzantine philosophers elaborated classical philosophical thought, to which they gave a novel interpretation, combining it with the teachings of the Fathers of the Church. They transcribed the works of Aristotle and interpreted them in an original manner. In fact, towards the end of this period, a lively scholarly debate took place, as to which of the two philosophical systems – the Platonic or the Aristotelian – was the superior. It is worth noting that, while at this time the influence of Byzantium on the West was quite strong, the Byzantines on the other hand remained impervious to Western mentality and scholastic philosophy.

The most important contribution to philosophical thought, however, came from later writers, namely from such scholars as Theodore Metochites, Nikephoros Gregoras, George Gemistos or Plethon and George Gennadios Scholarios. Choumnos, in his nine philosophical works, wrote a critique on the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. Metochites, in his book Hypomnematismoi (" Annotations"), offered the most extensive elaboration of the work of ancient philosophers, chiefly that of Aristotle, with whose works he was thoroughly acquainted. As to the great George Gemistos Plethon, he is related to a whole School of Platonists at Mistra, and his famous work Peri on Aristoteles pros Platona diaferetai (" On the Differences of Aristotle from Plato") which he wrote in Florence in 1439, was the spark which ignited the most serious conflict between Aristotelians and Platonists in Byzantium and Italy. He taught philosophy at Mistra and believed that the ideal state would be built on the Neoplatonic philosophical system and not on Christianity. He was thus the ideologic opponent of the last philosopher of this period, Patriarch Gennadios Scholarios, who, although he wrote an extensive commentary on Aristotle and a lesser one on Plotinus, did not hesitate to throw Plethon's book Nomon Syngraphe (" Book of Laws") into the fire with his own hands, after the latter's death.

The education of children in the Late Byzantine period was organised on the basic principles formulated in previous periods. Until they were six, children learnt their first letters at home at their mother's knee. After that, they went to school where they were taught the " holy letters", that is the alphabet, spelling, grammar and elementary arithmetic. The books the teachers used for the practice of these subjects were Christian texts, thus instruction assumed a rather religious character. This primary education took about 4 to 5 years. When they reached the age of eleven, only the sons of wealthy families who lived in big cities had access to secondary education, the enkyklios paideia (" general education"). This comprised instruction in four subjects (grammar, poetry, rhetoric and simple mathematics), this time on the basis of secular and not religious sources. This secondary education gave the boys the possibility to claim a position in the lower ranks of the state or church hierarchy. However, in order to attain the highest civil and ecclesiastical posts, further education was required, which was only provided in the capital and only by the imperial court and the Patriarchate respectively. Only the scions of eminent Byzantine families, the sons of superior officers and nephews or proteges of metropolitans, had access to further education. The emperor admitted them to his court and supervised their education by tutors. Education now demanded a more profound and serious study of poetry, rhetoric, medicine and philosophy, which was based on Aristoteles' Organon.

The curriculum naturally included the study of advanced mathematics, which were called tetractys, since they consisted of four different subjects: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music (in western European universities it was named as quadrivium). If a student aspired to the highest ecclesiastical offices, after completing these studies he would go on to specialise in theology.

In spite of its solid adherence to the Christian faith, Byzantine culture during its entire history from the 9th to the 12th century, had to face an almost permanent internal conflict. On the one hand, the common language, tradition, education and a philosophical interest, led many Byzantine scholars to the study of Greek antiquity.

On the other hand, classical studies were always strongly criticised, especially by the Church and the monks in particular, who believed that ancient Greek literature and philosophy were pagan creations and were therefore dangerous for Christians. These two conflicting groups were still active in the Byzantine society of the late 13th century and were about to witness a remarkable revival. While monasticism and the Church were beimg spiritually re-invigorated through the hesychast movement of the late Byzantine period, the study of the Greek Classics, promoted by eminent personalities, was going through what was termed the Palaiologan Renaissance.

The teachers of the time were scholars and intellectuals who, besides teaching, also wrote handbooks for their students and copied manuscripts in order to earn their living. The profession of teacher was highly esteemed and it was often the beginning of a successful administrative career, as was the case with George Akropolites and Nikephoros Blemmydes. The teachers were either private tutors or occupied a seat at the Higher Schools (the Universities of that time), which functioned at various periods of time.

A great importance in spiritual byzantine life played hesychasm. The term comes from the verb " hesychazo" (to be quiet, to rest) and its derivative is " hesychia". Already in the works of the Church Fathers of the 4th and 5th century, " hesychia" meant a kind of prayer to God, through spiritual introspection. This manner of praying was practised by monks and was disseminated by important monastic centres such as the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai. Thus, the word " hesychast" in the writings of that period became synonymous with hermit monk. Hesychasm was a conventional term to describe this method of prayer and contemplation by monks, which was designed to attain communication with God through internal quietude. The term was used, moreover, to describe not only this psychosomatic method of prayer, but also a whole intellectual " school" in Byzantine society, which claimed that God may reveal himself to man in a direct communication with him, when man constantly seeks him through the " prayer of the mind" or of " the heart".

In the late Byzantine period this belief constituted not only the core of an intellectual movement but also the main point of disagreement between social groups. Furthermore, it was incorporated into a wide context of political, religious and social disputes, which took place duirng that period. Thus, the term hesychasm was also used to refer to these religious and social conflicts of the 14th and 15th centuries in Byzantium.

Hesychasm began as an intellectual movement, which taught that communication with God is possible through personal contemplation and prayer in combination with special physical exercises to help concentration. The aim of this process was the attainment of theosis, that is the personal experience, on the part of the one who prays, of the Holy Light (the light of Mount Tabor, according to the Bible), which reveals itself suddenly before him. This strict and mystical spirituality was accompanied by an ascetic view of life and indifference to material wealth, and at the same time by a deep concern for the poor.

This could be achieved only if the person who prayed believed in two basic principles. First, that personal wholeness and communication with God is possible only within the Church, and second that no other non-Christian system of thought could contend in the mind of the Christian with the revelation of Christ.

Basing themselves on these principles of monastic austerity, Christian morality and social concern for the poor, the Patriarchs of Constantinople of the beginning of the 14th century initiated the hesychast movement. From it the Patriarchate drew the strength which often allowed it to follow a different policy from that of the emperor – especially on the issue of relations with the West – as well as to maintain its influence over the Slavic countries.

As for family life t he documents – mostly tax records – of the late Byzantine period differ considerably from those of previous periods, in which only the heads of families are listed. Now, all the members of the family are recorded, a possible cause for this being the donations en masse of land and paroikoi to monasteries and other landowners who, of course, wanted to know how many people were living and working on their property. Thus, more details are available on the structure of the family.

Scholars consider families and households as types of social organisation. The generally accepted definition of the family is that of a social unit founded on blood- and marriage-ties, while the main distinguishing features of a household are co-habitation and common ownership. The vast majority of the population consisted of nuclear families whose members were the parents and the unmarried children, while there was also a considerable number of households, where parents and married children or married siblings lived together in a kind of extended family.

In Byzantine society the family was basically a patriarchal one. The head of the household and the owner of the property was the man, and it was he who was responsible for the payment of taxes. However, the role of women was important and this is proven by the fact that, often, widows – or, more rarely, unmarried women – are mentioned as heads of households. Even surnames might be inherited from the mother's side of the family, although they were normally transmitted through the man. When a woman married, she usually moved to her husband's home, to which she brought her dowry. It is worth noting that women heads of households were taxed in the same way as men until the 15th century, after which time, under Ottoman rule, as a social welfare measure, widows were taxed less than men.

In Byzantium girls did not generally have access to secondary or university education. There were exceptional cases, however, in which women of noble birth, raised in a cultured social milieu, continued their studies on their own initiative and attained a high level of learning. This they achieved not by attending secondary or higher schools, since this was not permitted, but by studying alongside some reputed scholar, who might be a layman or a cleric, or even by personal effort and study and thanks to the access they had to some private library. They finally managed, thus, to " impose" the femine presence on the intellectual circles of their time and to earn the recognition of their contemporary intellectuals.

 

Western Middle Ages

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the western half of the Roman Empire began to fragment into smaller, weaker kingdoms. By the end of the Middle Ages, many modern European states had taken shape. During this time, the precursors of many modern institutions, such as universities and bodies of representative government, were created.

The variety of religious views in Late Antiquity mirrored the great variety of people in the Roman Empire, a variety that increased during the 4th and 5th centuries and transformed the empire politically. Beyond the borders patrolled by the Roman army were peoples whom the Romans called Germans. Although not biologically different from the Romans, they had a different culture – or rather, many different cultures. They lived in tribal groupings that were always in a state of change, breaking up and absorbing other groups. They fought with the Romans, but they also traded with them. Many Germans admired the Romans and adopted their habits and institutions. Many also adopted Christianity, although most of them became Arian Christians because Arian missionaries converted them.

Since the Carolingian period, churches and monasteries had run schools to educate boys who were going to become priests and monks. In the 11th and 12th centuries new types of schools were developed in some cities. These schools were different from the old ones because they were usually located in city cathedrals rather than in monasteries, and they were dedicated to more advanced studies than the other schools. For this reason, they attracted students and teachers not just from the neighborhood but from all over Europe who were interested in studying subjects such as philosophy, medicine, and law. Many of the students who attended these schools went on to careers in the church. Others became lawyers and doctors, often serving wealthy merchants and their families. Still others became civil servants and worked for princes or kings.

France and Italy led the way in developing these city schools. Italy and southern France were famous for their schools of law and medicine. Northern France, especially Paris, was known for its schools of philosophy and theology.

In the 13th century many of these schools were organized into universities, the direct ancestors of modern American and European universities. By the end of the Middle Ages, there were nearly 80 universities throughout Europe, not only in France, Italy, and Spain, but also in the empire – at Prague, Heidelberg, and Cologne – in Poland, and in Scandinavia. They were largely self-governing, enforcing their own rules about dress, classroom activities, and the materials taught. Teachers, called masters, decided when the students were ready to get their degrees or to be allowed to teach.

Students and teachers often clashed with city authorities. This sometimes led to student and master protests, to demands for special privileges, and to measures that strengthened the universities’ self-government. For example, in 1200 a brawl broke out between students and the police in Paris. Some students were killed, and the masters were outraged. The king of France feared that the masters would leave the city and thus deprive him of the prestige and commercial vitality that their presence gave to his kingdom. To prevent this, he recognized the clerical status of the students. From that time on, if students were arrested they were tried by church courts, not royal courts. As church courts tended to be lenient, this privilege pleased both masters and students.

Almost all universities taught the so-called seven liberal arts. The most important of these were the first three, called the trivium: grammar (what would now be called reading and writing), rhetoric (literature and more complicated kinds of writing), and logic. While learning these, students might also study some or all of the other four, called the quadrivium. These were mathematical and scientific subjects: arithmetic (what would now be called number theory), geometry (number relations), music (proportions and harmonies), and astronomy. Some students also studied theology, which was considered the highest and most profound subject, since it was the study of God and his works. When they had successfully completed their studies, students became masters.

The courses of study were not the same in all universities, however. At Bologna, in Italy, students studied the laws of the Roman Empire. In the early 12th century, scholars had rediscovered this huge and systematic body of laws, which seemed to cover every problem. At Salerno, also in Italy, students studied medical treatises, observed dissected animals, and learned current theories about the body derived from the works of Greek philosopher Aristotle. They learned about Aristotle from Arab scholars, who had rediscovered, translated, and commented on his writings.

Most classes in medieval schools were taught as lectures in which the teacher read a text aloud and commented on its important or difficult passages, while the students followed along, often with a copy of the text. Other classes were organized as discussions in which both masters and students asked questions and prodded one another to provide and support their answers. These were often very lively meetings, and students greatly enjoyed the engaging atmosphere of the classroom.

In Medieval literature long epic poems were written in the vernacular to celebrate the prowess of knights in battle. Knights did not want to be known only for their physical strength, however. Poems called romances celebrated the virtues of knights: their loyalty, generosity, piety, and polite behavior. Romances generally took place in a fantasy world, such as the court of King Arthur. They told of great knights, such as Lancelot, who were witty at court, gentle with ladies, devoted to God, and brave in battle – and who often got into trouble trying to be all these things at the same time. When Lancelot's lady, Guinevere, told him to do his worst in battle to prove his love for her, the poor knight had to make a fool of himself in a tournament until she reversed her command.

These ideals of love and bravery were expressed primarily in literature, but real knights both inspired these poems and tried to live up to them. Chivalry, which comes from the French word for horse, cheval, was the knight's way of combining bravery, honor, generosity, piety, and courtesy. It is unclear how much knightly behavior in the Middle Ages was truly chivalrous, but there is little doubt that this is how knights thought of themselves. The biographer of William the Marshal considered William a model of chivalry. After years of brave battling in tournaments, William was noticed by Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of Henry II of England. William served Eleanor by coaching one of her young sons in the skills of a warrior. William was pious as well, going to the Holy Land on a Crusade and gaining fame for his fighting there. Later in life he was richly rewarded. He married well, and although he was from fairly lowly origins, he became King John's most important adviser.

Especially for proving courtesy tournaments were great gatherings at court. There, amid much noise and excitement, knights could show off their courage and their skill in the use of weapons. Knights fought against one another in groups, in what was called a melee, or one-on-one, with each riding on horseback in a joust. The knights who were victorious in tournaments gained horses, money, and fame for their skill and bravery. Those who lost were lucky if they gave up only their horses: Early tournaments differed little from actual combat, and knights were often severely injured or killed. In the 13th century, however, rulers and others began to impose rules to make tournaments safer.

Christianity dominated Western culture and that’s why the main purpose of the visual arts was to teach people, many of whom could not read, about religion. Art taught by means of delight, drawing people’s attention and helping them understand the spiritual through fascinating forms (whether delicately refined saints or monstrous devils), ornately carved and painted decoration, precious materials (including gold, ivory, and gems), and colored light pouring forth from stained glass.

No particular form of art was considered superior during the Middle Ages. High value was placed on small-scale luxury objects such as illuminated manuscripts, jewelry, and metal objects used in church services. The great medieval cathedrals – buildings that required the skills of hundreds of craftsmen – became the pride of entire cities. Wealthy people decorated their homes with huge tapestries that told stories from mythology. Even clothing could be elaborately decorated and express a person’s status and moral views.

Craftsmen, carefully trained in specialized medieval workshops, made the objects we now call art. Our word masterpiece comes from this medieval workshop tradition. The term refers to an object made by a craftsman at the end of his training to show he had acquired the skills to be called a master. During the Middle Ages a masterpiece could be a statue, a stained glass window, or a pair of shoes.

Medieval thinkers on every topic were powerfully influenced by their Greek and Roman forebears. In the case of aesthetics and art theory, the principal concepts and theories were inherited from Pythagoras, Plato, the Neoplatonists (Plotinus and the Pseudo-Dionysius), Augustine and Vitruvius. But all of the ideas from these sources, if not already Christian in origin, came to be heavily coloured by Christianity.

Another influence, often overlooked, was the physical survival of classical buildings and artifacts, particularly in Italy and other Mediterranean territories, and the survival of at least some of the skills required to produce them. These were periodically renewed through contacts with Byzantium, and, later, the equally brilliant civilization of Islam. A final, very different, influence came from the artistic motifs imported into the classical world by waves of barbarian invaders from the fifth century onwards.

Christian view was that God, creator of the universe, was supremely rational and the source of reason. It was also consistent with the idea which could be read in the Book of Wisdom (11: 21) that God had ‘ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight’. God was thus the first and best artist, creator of the richness and beauty of the earth and skies. Human artists were engaged in work analogous to God’s, and used their reason in their work just as God used His.

However, human artists were not the equal of God the supreme artist. Human works of art were products of an inferior or limited human reason, and thus lower in the ontological order than natural objects. This view coincided with what the medievals also read in Plato, whose thinking, mediated through St.Augustine and through Neoplatonism, played a major role in medieval thought.

A kind of apocalyptic belief was common to the greater part of medieval society. Conviction in the existence of the devil was integral to the Christian recognition of the pervasiveness of sin; the struggle between Christ and Antichrist expressed the dualism
between the flesh and the spirit. God's retribution was as real as his love; and in times of stress or tension the sense of impending doom came easily to the surface, among the learned and the sophisticated as well as the illiterate and poor. Adherence to God or rejection of him marked the difference between the saved and the damned, which St. Augustine in the City of God identified with the difference between the heavenly and earthly cities.

In any sense prophecy was historical, however idealized, as well as eschatological; for it drew upon what had already happened in order to point to what was about to come. Not surprisingly, therefore, the idea of prophecy as more than periodic outbursts of fear and distress which punctuated periods of disturbance – such as the People's Crusade at the end of the eleventh century or peasant risings from that time onwards – was grounded in an interpretation of history.

While throughout the earlier Middle Ages there had been writings on Antichrist, such as by Adso in the tenth century, medieval prophecy only became significant with the renewed study of history in the twelfth century. The Middle Ages are commonly believed to have lacked historical awareness. In the modern understanding of history as a discipline that is true, but as a recognition of temporal sequence and change it is not. Like the Judaic-Christian tradition on which it drew, medieval prophecy saw in the impending dissolution of the present order the climax of the world's history. It differed in giving that history a new pattern which it owed to Saint Augustine more than to anyone else. In the City of God he had taken the seven days of Genesis as the paradigm of the seven ages of the world.

The first age, as the first day, extends from Adam to the deluge; the second from the deluge to Abraham, equaling the first not in length of time but in the number of generations, there being ten in each. From Abraham to the advent of Christ there are, as the evangelist Matthew calculates, three periods, in each of which are fourteen generations – one period from Abraham to David, a second from David to the captivity, a third from the captivity to the birth of Christ in the flesh. There are thus five ages in all. The sixth is now passing, and cannot be measured by any number of generations.... After this period God shall rest as on the seventh day, when he shall give us (who shall be the seventh day) rest in himself... the seventh shall be our sabbath which shall be brought to a close, not by an evening, but by the Lord's day, as an eighth and eternal day, consecrated by the resurrection of Christ, and prefiguring the eternal repose not only of the spirit but also of the body (City of God, Book XXXII, Ch. 30). This periodizing of Christian history from the Bible formed the basis of the world histories of the twelfth century. They were particularly in vogue among German writers, like Anselm of Havelberg, Geroch of Reichersberg, Otto of Freising, and Rupert of Deutz.

Germany, as the seat of the medieval empire since the tenth century, had been the focus of the struggles between its kings and the papacy; each side in its claim for precedence over the other sought for antecedents and historical precedents which stimulated the study of history. But this was also part of a European-wide revival of learning, speculation, and the study of law; and Calabria not Germany was the scene of a new apocalyptic conception of history which was to be the most influential for over two centuries.

By the beginning of the XVth century (it would be 7000 AM) there was the almost universal expectation of the coming end to the present age, and its displacement by a new golden age, which would endure for the rest of time. Although in this form it was the preserve of the dissidents, the sense of impending upheaval was very strong in the later Middle Ages.

It was stimulated by natural disasters such as the Black Death from 1348 to 1350, the endemic social and political disturbances of the period, and then by the nearly forty years of the Great Schism (1378-1417), which led many thinkers and ecclesiastics to see in the two rival popes of Rome and Avignon the advent of Antichrist. The defeat of the Byzantium by the Ottomans was believed to be a sign of the last time. Apocalyptic ideas were spread among diverse groups and individuals: the Flagellants in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the heretical semi-mystical sect of the Men of Intelligence in the first decade of the fifteenth century, many of the Czech Reformers, as well as mystics like Catherine of Siena. It reached its climax in the early years of the Hussite Revolt in 1419 and 1420 in the Taborite movement which was organized upon the assumption of the imminent end of the world. Such proclamations continued to be made during the fifteenth century, especially in Germany, where in the sixteenth century they culminated with Thomas Mü nzer (or Mü ntzer), (ca. 1489-1525), a German Anabaptist and popular leader.