Posts
What follows is a horrendously brief narrative that borders on dangerous simplicity. However, I think the gist of it is correct and that it will clarify a number of posts. There are two essential elements of modern society which make "modernity" utterly distinct from all other pre-modern societies that preceded it. There are, of course, countless more but they are not by any means, but I believe that they are two of the most important. These elements were conceived in the medieval Europe but they were transformed by the crisis of the 17th century and utterly triumphed in 18th. They would cause, beginning in 1789, a series of violent revolutions in the Western world that would utterly transform society over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, all of which have led to the production of our pluralistic, impersonal, and materialistic (though prosperous and affluent) post-modern world. The two elements that I plan to trace are these: the nation-state/civil society and rationalism. Two other vastly important elements are science and capitalism but their rise is more well known and I will allude to them only briefly throughout what follows. Science and capitalism both produced the industrial age but, I believe, that industrial age could have taken any number of different forms had the Western world bee dominated by different ideas, a different culture, and a different kind of political organization. It is worth noting that without the rise of the nation-state it is doubtful that the spectacular rise of trade after 1500 would have been possible and thus little capital would have been accumulated to finance an industrial revolution, an issue I will return to later.
-
Before the making of modernity can be truly appreciated, on needs to understand what came before it. Non-historians, and even some historians, make the fallacy that delivers a deathblow to all historical inquiry; anachronism. Far too often the common sense notions of how our society functions and what the contours of the modern world view are simply applied to the past. The world I will describe is radically different from our own. In the first place a person derived his identity from a geographical region far smaller to the nation. Nations, strictly speaking, did not exist before at least 1500. People were primarily from Yorkshire, Essex, the Midlands, or Suffolk instead of "England." Only in the fifteenth century during the later years of the Hundred Years War did a primitive English or French identity emerge. Even more so a person identified with his community, either the village manor or the burg. It was unlikely that a commoner traveled more than 20-30 miles from their home during their life. Most social control was informal rather than formal; it was administered by the community elders, the local guilds, or the local parish. Social bonds were intensely relational and duty bound instead of impersonal and contractual. Though the bureaucracy of the monarchy was relatively small prior to 1500 it had been growing steadily since about 1100 with the rise of the state.
-
And despite the fact that the basic identity for most people was a relatively small geographical area, Europe was more unified during the Middle Ages than it would be until the creation of the Common Market after World War II. European unity was derived from three basic sources; the Latin Church, the Latin Mass, and Latin letters. Though it's power waned after its height in the 13th century under Innocent III with the rise of the state, the Catholic Church remained a very strong institution in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance and its system of monasteries and bishoprics provided Europeans from Ireland to Lithuania with a common faith. With the Catholic Church came, of course, the Latin Mass. What constituted "Europe" depended on whether the Mass was celebrated and a bishop was put in place. A common faith and a common language facilitated a common intellectual community. Besides authors like Dante and some Italian humanists of the Renaissance, Latin was the lingua franca of the intellectual world of the High and Late Middle Ages as well as the for most of Renaissance. Though often neglected, the High and Late Middle Ages produced superb scholarship in philosophy, theology, and science that would contribute to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution.
-
There was also no distinction between the secular and religious in the pre-modern European world. The sacred was immanent and pervasive; there was a true sense that the majesty of God was visible in all things created. It was believed that Classical learning, philosophy, and the sciences all contributed to a better understanding of God and His Word. Of course this meant that the wrath of God was just as immanent as his majesty. Though canon law and civic law comprised separate spheres all law was based on the divine, natural law. Modern notions of individual rights were non-existent. Instead each person had specific duties both to God and his fellow man. Ideally, the king, surrounded by a council of wise lawyers and counselors, ruled under and by the divinely-given natural law and its duties that were embodied by the canons of law and by tradition and precedent. The king (and his lords) had a duty to rule his subjects benevolently and in return his subjects had the duty to obey him. When both of these duties were fulfilled the body politic was healthy. Kings, who were said to "reign by the grace of God" and, in a way, acted as mediators between the man and the divine, were often idealized father figures and when rebellions against the monarchy they were aimed not at the king himself but his advisors who gave the king unwise council. Rebellions by peasants usually sought for ministers to be sacked and conditions improved rather than any change in the system (though the Peasant Revolt in England during the 14th century did have some radicals call for the overthrow the nobility and a direct relationship between the king and his people). To have rebelled against the social order would have been a vile sin. It is no coincidence that the lowest level of Hell in Dante's Inferno is reserved for rebels and traitors (Satan, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas). The line between Church and State were blurred; although they were separate institutions and occupied separate spheres, they were bound together through a dialectic relationship. One characteristic of Latin Christendom, and thereby Europe, was the communitas fidelium - "community of the faithful." Simply put, it meant that to be a good subject was to be a good Christian and vice versa. The ideal of kings was to create a Christian kingdom in their realms.
-
As for the nobility, there was "power in the blood." It is not right to speak of "classes" during the Middle Ages; class is an invention of the 19th century. Status was not based on wealth but on prestige - i.e. a person's place in the aristocratic hierarchy and place based on familial - or blood - relations. It was not uncommon in the Late Middle Ages and especially the Renaissance for mercantile or banking families to be far wealthier than noble ones, but such families were forced to buy titles and land if they wished to move up in society. There were essentially three orders, at least officially, in every medieval society; the clergy, the nobles, and the rest (serfs, freemen, burgers, etc). It was the nobility who dominated warfare and military command was given to the noble with the most prestige, not the most talent. This was a fact that would continue until Napoleon. As the medieval world became the early modern world the role of the aristocracy became increasingly problematic since, despite their name, they were not the "best" in society. Indeed, in the Late Middle Ages the order of rural gentlemen and urban-based merchants and lawyers were better educated than the nobles and at times wealthier. It was from this level of society that the emerging "new monarchs" would draw the bulk of their bureaucracy since they were well educated and loyal (they owed their place in society to the king).
-
A final element of the pre-modern (European) world worth mentioning is the role of tradition. Innovation was abhorrent to the medieval and the Renaissance mind and ancient texts (the Bible, but also the Classical authors) were treated as authoritative. "Who could improve on Aristotle's Metaphysics or Ptolemy's Amalgast?" the medieval or Renaissance man would ask. The traditions of canon and civic law, the ways of the ancestors and forbearers, were also viewed as authoritative and unchangeable (though of course everything was subject to divine law). To have gone against them smacked of hubris. It was the goal of medieval Scholasticism to fuse these two authoritative and conflicting traditions (the Classical philosophy and Christianity) together. The Renaissance and the Reformation were both efforts to bring back the ideal past, the Classics and the Early Church respectively, rather than to introduce new innovations. Of course, both movements ultimately were incredibly innovate, despite what the humanists and reformers thought. Such was the medieval world. It was an era of incredibly dynamism and production: in the years 1000-1300 the foundations of European civilization were set, including those quintessentially European institutions (the university, the state, parliaments, our system of law, etc.) However, for all of its accomplishments the Middle Ages had its problems and beginning in the Renaissance, but especially after 1500, these problems would be fleshed out. Though the Renaissance and the Reformation sought to revitalize the pre-medieval past, which they disparaging turned into the "dark ages," ultimately they would create something incredibly new. They put Europe on the road to modernity and it is that process to which we will turn to next.
