Enemies of Science: the Handmaiden's Handmaiden in the Early

Enemies of Science: The Handmaiden’s Handmaiden in the Early Medieval West Michael P. Honchock Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts In English Anthony J. Colaianne, Chair Joseph F. Eska Matthew Goodrum April 23, 2007 Blacksburg, Virginia Keywords: Other, Rationality, Magic, Cosmology, History, Ideas Enemies of Science: The Handmaiden’s Handmaiden in the Early Medieval West Michael P. Honchock ABSTRACT The gradual blending of classical science and epistemology with indigenous/traditional practices and modes of understanding (particularly magic and religion) in the early western Middle Ages tends to be misunderstood. The purpose of this study is to address the reason(s) why the early medieval West has been labeled an irrational, unscientific “Dark Age” in order to point out that this conception’s existence has more to do with limited historical perspectives than with reality. The anachronistic superimposition of modern presuppositions and methodological expectations is a very old phenomenon. Ironically, however, it has crept into the history of science and extended to ostensibly objective “scientific” historiography to such a degree that dismissiveness regarding the other ways of knowing that have informed our scientific and epistemological development frequently tends to obscure historical continuity. My goal in this undertaking is to firmly establish how we may understand that the intellectual revolution beginning in twelfth-century Europe was founded on a rich and multifarious tradition of knowledge and understanding; the preceding seven or eight centuries of the early Middle Ages was not one of intellectual “darkness” and should not be discarded as such. The approach I have taken is intended to demonstrate, rather than simply state, this goal by roughly imitating of the process of intellectual transmission in the early Middle Ages. Therefore, primary sources are supplemented by numerous secondary interpretations from various academic disciplines in the hope that collecting and reforming ideas in this fashion will draw out the inherent connectivity of ideological thought structures and approaches to the natural world. Table of Contents Introduction: Into the Darkness?............................................................................ 3 Part I: Science, Magic, and Religion…………………………………………….. 25 Part II: “What have the Romans ever done for us?”…………………………….. 37 Part III: The Fall of Science or the Science of the Fall?........................................ 70 Conclusion: The Veil of Otherness………………………………………………. 111 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………... 121 2 INTRODUCTION: Into the Darkness? Science is, to varying degrees at given times and locations, considered not only a means by which foundational knowledge is discovered and established but also a foundation in and of itself. It is thus a way of looking at the world that fluctuates in importance and scope along with the ideas of the cultures by which it is developed. With that in mind, however, the very term “science,” when employed in relation to the late Roman Empire and on into Dark Age Europe without some clarification of its scope, accompanying philosophy, and socio-cultural contexts, can lead to mistaken identity. In that sense, the epithet resembles other terms formerly applied to describe pursuits and practices markedly different from (perhaps even bordering on antithetical to) those they subsequently came to signify. This is not to say that we can realistically hope to simply drop the ideological framework of the time in which we live; there is an immense difference between recognizing that framework and thinking we can actually remove ourselves from it. What we can do, however, is dedicate ourselves to explaining the actual ideas of a past time and their surrounding contexts to the best of our honest abilities in order to allow connections to reveal themselves more naturally; in short, to attempt to see things through the eyes of our ancestors as much as our present vantage point will allow. Perhaps the associations of darkness with this period stem from misunderstandings of a mysterious past. In recent decades, however, historians and anthropologists have begun to shatter the stubbornly persistent conception of early medieval Europe as inescapably dark and altogether brutish and nasty. This is a difficult task and one that is by no means complete. As Barbara Tuchman argued that fourteenth 3 century Europe (France, in particular) is an enigmatic “distant mirror” for the twentieth century, I believe the earlier medieval period is an equally new frontier for scholars willing to dig beneath longstanding outward appearances to find reflections of common humanity.1 An aversion to opacity is slowly being replaced by a strong interest in that very quality. It is no small irony that our cultural forebears in the first millennium C.E. witnessed, contributed to, and defied their own version of dogmatic resistance to approaching and understanding the unknown. Their unknown was nature itself and their resistance (if I may employ the term so liberally) came to be typically theological. Our unknown, on the other hand, has been their world and our dogmatism historical, philosophical, and scientific. These self-inflicted barriers were, and continue to be, products of general ideology and, as such, essentially susceptible to the ravages of time. We tire of them or grow curious about what they conceal, thus beginning, continuing, and/or hastening the process of their erosion. In this way, the history of ideas—that is, both in actuality and in our various retellings—is never static; we always have something to learn on both sides of the looking-glass. Thus, my approach to the Dark Ages is deeply indebted to the conception of historicism C.S. Lewis offers in his peerless work, The Discarded Image: “the belief that by studying the past we can learn not only historical but meta-historical or transcendental truth.”2 With this in mind, I wish to offer a retelling of the history of science in the early Middle Ages by considering the essential otherness of the specific rationality being developed in those centuries. “At any rate,” as Etienne 1 Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978). 2 C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 174. 4 Gilson remarks in his introduction to Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, “it should not be considered a waste of time to substitute for the usually received one a less conventional convention.”3 Early medieval Europe presents a complicated case for the study of science as one of those rare time periods in which knowledge of socio-cultural and ideological context is not only helpful, it is absolutely imperative for a realistic understanding of its development. Moreover, knowledge of the physical world in the early Middle Ages was quite literally provisional, a fact that necessarily pushes our study of it back to its sources in Late Antiquity. Yet the common conception of the period roughly defined by the disintegration of the Roman Empire around the fifth century at one end and, at the other, the introduction of long-lost classical texts to Western Christendom in the twelfth century as a “Dark Age” is our most formidable roadblock. Often persisting in spite of itself, this stereotype is too ingrained, too sensational, and so conveniently supportive of the dichotomy-imposing view of otherness against which we may broadly define concepts such as “civilization” and “science.” But, like all stereotypes, this one contains a kernel of truth. Civilization and science, as we have come to know them, were often in dire straits in the early medieval West—after all, the period that began with the disintegration of one of the most celebrated and successful civilizations in human history also endured such hardships as climate deterioration, Gothic wars in and around Italy, Frankish military conquests in Gaul, religious persecution, bubonic plague, Viking raids, and the First Crusade. But these difficulties had another side to them: the climate took a turn for the better around the eighth century, a period of Ostrogothic rule in the West in the late 3 Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), 5. 5 fifth to early sixth century under the emperor Theodoric witnessed a revival of Hellenism in Italy, the Carolingian renaissance of the eighth and ninth centuries refocused and reemphasized learning and culture, and the First Crusade helped open the door for the twelfth century translations of Greek and Arabic texts. At no point will I attempt to stubbornly profess, for fear being somehow marginalized as a typically post-modern rabble rouser, that this study is not at all what it appears to be: an argument for a reconceptualization of the early Middle Ages’ place in the history of science. But it is not merely that. Trying to dramatically invert the cliché by offering a complete exorcism of the demon of darkness that often shrouds this period in mystical, fantastic obscurity, while tempting, would nonetheless demonstrate poor scholarship and a general lack of perspective. I wish to begin by examining that demon, drawing attention to it in the belief that we should understand why the demon exists— particularly as it appears

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