Western Civ. 1 J Decline of the Middle The Renaissance Ages Page 2 Page 3 CULTURE OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES In the last few lectures, I have been discussing the period known as the High Middle Ages (1000-1300). It is the period in which the typical medieval institu- tions reached their fullest development. In this period, the Church, the guilds, the feudal monarchies, and the universities flourished in their characteristic forms. This is also the period when the outlook of the Middle Ages reached its zenith and characteristic medieval ideas found their fullest expression in art and literature. That is my subject for today. One feature of medieval intellectual life sets it apart from that of the ancient world on the one hand and of modern times on the other. Art and literature in the High Middle Ages were almost entirely religious in content and in purpose. There were several reasons for this. The Church played a major, dominant role in intellectual activity. It was wealthier than any other institution, and it provided most of the money to support and pay for art. The universities were Church institutions, and so only churchmen were educated at first. For a long time, only they were able to produce literature. Also, remember that St. Augustine set the tone for medieval thought when he argued that the goal of all human activity should be salvation. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that when Europe began to recover after 1000 and there was money to construct large buildings again, Europeans usually built churches. There were two types of Church architecture. The earliest style of church developed in south Europe. It was called Romanesque because it was based on architectural forms first created by the Romans. The Romanesque churches used round arches to support the roofs and upper parts fo the church buildings. The round arch was a Roman invention. With round arches, the weight of the roof, ceiling, and upper part of the building pushes straight down on the walls. The walls have to be very strong to support the structure. Romanesque churches are massive and solid with small windows and doors. They were decorated with murals and paintings. About 1100, a new style developed near Paris and slowly spread to other parts of the north. It is called the gothic style. The gothic style used pointed arches instead of round ones. With pointed arches, the weight pushes out instead of down. Reinforcements called buttresses were placed along the outside of the walls to hold the building up and together. P a g e 1 o f 13 Romanesque Architecture Romanesque cathedrals interior and exterior. Note the paucity of light in the interior as a result of few windows due to the need to build thick continuous walls. (Left: interior of the Duomo at Orvietto, Italy. Below: the Romanesque abby church at Maria Laach in Belgium, built in 1093. Gothic Architecture Exterior and interior views of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, on of the most impressive examples of German High Gothic architecture. Note the amazingly light interior of the church, lit only by sunlight through the great stained glass windows. P a g e 2 o f 13 Because buttresses provided support instead of walls, it was possible to have very large stained-glass windows to light the church. The windows made the church seem almost transparent from inside. In the High Middle Ages, light was a common symbol of divine grace. In a gothic church, grace seemed to be present everywhere. Literature of the High Middle Ages The greatest figure in medieval literature was an Italian named Alighieri Dante (d. 1321). His most famous work is a long poem called Divine Comedy. It is deeply religious. The Divine Comedy deals with the greatest concern of medieval man: how can one achieve salvation? The poem describes a journey by Dante through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven. The story symbolizes the spiritual journey that all human beings must make to be saved. As he goes through Hell and Purgatory, Dante is guided by the ghost of the Roman poet Virgil, who represents the earthly wisdom and learning of the classical world. Along the way, they meet various persons who symbolize different earthly sins. With the help of Virgil, Dante is able to avoid the sins himself and to continue on his way. Occasionally, however, Dante is unable to go on, and even Virgil cannot help him. In those places a woman named Lucy comes down from heaven to assist them. The name Lucy means light. Light, as we have seen, stands for the grace of God and divine revelation. At the gate of Heaven, Virgil is left behind, and Dante is carried upward through the spheres of Dante (d. 1321) is considered the greatest poet of the Middle the seven planets to God. Ages. The Divine Comedy is a theological argument in verse. Dante argues that both earthly wisdom and learning and faith in divine revelation are needed to achieve salvation. As we have not believe in God have an idea of God in their minds. They seen, Medieval philosophers spent a lot of time trying to figure could not have an idea of God, if God did not exist. out whether faith or reason was the most important way to This argument is important because it raised a philosophical achieve knowledge. Dante argues that salvation is achieved by problem that all later scholastics argued about. It was called the using both! problem of the Universals. A Universal is a particular kind of Philosophy idea. The first men to discuss the problem of the Universals did not really think of it this way, but basically it is a simply the The Scholastic philosophers used logical reasoning to question of what ideas are. In his definition, Anselm assumes understand and to explain Christian theology. But early that if we have an idea in our minds, it has to come from scholastic philosophers used logical argument only to something real outside our minds. Thinkers who believed that supplement faith in. A good example is St. Anselm (d. 1109). were called realists because they said that ideas are real. Those He was the father of scholasticism. Anselm argued that basic who said that ideas are not real but exist only in our minds were Christian ideas had to be accepted on faith, but he also called nominalists. Most of us are nominalists, but almost all believed that Christians could employ reason to prove many of important thinkers before Anselm’s time were realists. Plato those ideas and to understand them better. His motto was, “I believed that ideas were real, and St. Augustine had agreed with believe so that I may understand.” im. Not surprisingly, most scholastics were realists. They argued As an example of his approach, I want to consider one of mainly about the relationship between the reality of ideas and his most important logical arguments. He used it to prove that the reality of concrete objects. Th problem of the Universals is God exists. Oversimplified, it goes like this: Even people who do important because it bears directly on whether logic can be used to discover religious truth. P a g e 3 o f 13 The next great scholastic after Anselm was a teacher at and you can deduce the purpose logically on the basis of Paris named Peter Abelard (d. 1142). He placed far more observation. This is a qualified realist position. Ideas are emphasis on logical argument and reason to understand real, but only if they can be deduced logically from the way Christian teaching. He did have great faith in the ability of things actually are. But most important, Aquinas insisted logical argument to establish theological truth. that these two types of truth – one based He wrote logical discussions of such basic on faith and one based on observation Christian doctrines as the Trinity. Many and logical argument would always conservative Church leaders and thinkers agree. And he set out to prove logically objected to the emphasis he placed on on the basis of observation every logic. Many of his writings were eventually single major Christian idea. He was so condemned by the Church. Because of his successful that the thought of Thomas example, however, later thinkers used Aquinas has become the basis of reason to examine Christian teachings. pretty much all Roman Catholic The most important scholastic thinker theology. But in his own time, he was was St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). He considered a dangerous innovator. His used philosophical logical argument more arguments based on Aristotle fully than any previous religious writer. He disagreed too much with those of St. tried to reconcile classical philosophy with Augustine based on Plato. St. Christian theology. Why did he bother? Augustine’s theology was the one that Around 1200, something happened had always been accepted. that threw scholastic philosophy into an Aquinas’s extensive use of logic was uproar. Four new books of Aristotle were so controversial that some thinkers brought into Western Europe from the began to reconsider the whole basis of Arab lands in Spain. Before this, previous scholastic thought. The most extreme and influential reaction came Europeans possessed only two elementary St. Thomas Aquinas works of Aristotle. They had always from an Englishman, William of thought that his ideas were similar to those Ockham (d.1349). William insisted that of Plato and St. Augustine. But the new books revealed that it was impossible to prove anything about Aristotle disagreed with Plato in many ways. In particular, God or religion using reason.